detachment

When I preach, I usually speak of detachment and

 say that a man should be empty of self and all things;

 and secondly, that he should be reconstructed in the simplicity
  beyond all words and beyond all understanding that God is;

 and thirdly, that he should consider the great longing

 which God has set up in the soul, such that by means of it 

man may wonderfully attain to God; and fourthly, 

of the purity of the divine nature.

~ Meister Eckhart

the woodcarver

Kling, the master carver, made a bell stand

Of precious wood. When it was finished,

All who saw it were astounded.  They said it must be

The work of spirits.

The Prince of Lu said to the master carver:

"What is your secret?"

Kling replied: " I am only a workman:

I have no secret. There is only this:

When I began to think about the work you commanded

I guarded my spirit, did not expend it

On trifles, that were not to the point.

I fasted in order to set

My heart at rest.

After three days fasting,

I had forgotten gain and success.

After five days

I had forgotten praise or criticism.

After seven days

I had forgotten my body

With all its limbs."

"By this time all thought of your Highness

And of the court had faded away.

All that might distract me from the work

Had vanished.

I was collected in the single thought

Of the bell stand."

"Then I went to the forest

To see the trees in their own natural state.

When the right tree appeared before my eyes,

The bell stand also appeared in it, clearly, beyond doubt.

All I had to do was to put forth my hand 

And begin."

"If I had not met this particular tree

There would have been 

No bell stand at all."

"What happened?

My own collected thought

Encountered the hidden potential in the wood;

From this live encounter came the work

Which you ascribe to the spirits."

~ Chuang Tzu

translation by Thomas Merton

from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton

when it is one-sided

.

.

"I have found a thought, Govinda, which you'll again regard as a joke or foolishness, but which is my best thought. It says: The opposite of every truth is just as true! That's like this: any truth can only be expressed and put into words when it is one-sided. Everything is one-sided which can be thought with thoughts and said with words, it's all one-sided, all just one half, all lacks completeness, roundness, oneness. When the exalted Gotama spoke in his teachings of the world, he had to divide it into Sansara and Nirvana, into deception and truth, into suffering and salvation. It cannot be done differently, there is no other way for him who wants to teach. But the world itself, what exists around us and inside of us, is never one-sided. A person or an act is never entirely Sansara or entirely Nirvana, a person is never entirely holy or entirely sinful. It does really seem like this, because we are subject to deception, as if time was something real.

...

I have experienced on my body and on my soul that I needed sin very much, I needed lust, the desire for possessions, vanity, and needed the most shameful despair, in order to learn how to give up all resistance, in order to learn how to love the world, in order to stop comparing it to some world I wished, I imagined, some kind of perfection I had made up, but to leave it as it is and to love it and to enjoy being a part of it.

...

... love, oh Govinda, seems to me to be the most important thing of all. To thoroughly understand the world, to explain it, to despise it, may be the thing great thinkers do. But I'm only interested in being able to love the world, not to despise it, not to hate it and me, to be able to look upon it and me and all beings with love and admiration and great respect.

.

~ Herman Hesse

from  Siddhartha

.

nearer the roses

A nightingale flies nearer the roses.

A girl blushes. Pomegranates ripen.

Hallaj will be executed. A man walks

a mountain path, solitary and full of

prayer. Trust grows for nine months,

then a new being appears. Narcissus

at the edge, creekwater washing tree

roots: God is giving a general into-

ductory lecture. We hear and read it

everywhere, in the field, through the

branches. We'll never finish studying.

Neither of us has a penny, yet we're

walking the jewelers' bazaar seriously

considering making a purchase! Or

shall I say this with other metaphors?

A barn crowded with souls. Quietness

served around a table. Two people talk

along a road that's paved with words.

~ Rumi

.

attachment

.

Our self-centeredness,

our distinctive attachment to the feeling 

of an independent "I" works to inhibit

our compassion.

True compassion can only develop

and grow as such self-grasping is reduced

and eventually eliminated.

~ Dalai Lama 

from Tibetan Portrait - The Power of Compassion

photo by Phil Borges

the woman is Tamdin, 69 years old, she was imprisoned in 1987 but now has escaped, 
walking 35 days across the Himalayas to seek an audience with the Dalai Lama.

.

destroyer of illusion

Compassion is the destroyer of illusion, 

it isn’t helping ladies over the road or helping people get through life.  

 

Compassion doesn’t help the separate individual,

 it exposes the dream of separation and leaves freedom. 

 

 Unconditional love doesn’t recognize that there is

 a separate person who needs help… 

that is the freeing nature of the boundlessness

 that is palpable when we are together.

~ Tony Parsons