a strange thing is loneliness

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What a strange thing is loneliness, and how frightening it is! We never allow ourselves to get too close to it; and if by chance we do, we quickly run away from it. We will do anything to escape from loneliness, to cover it up. Our conscious and unconscious preoccupation seems to be to avoid it or to overcome it. Avoiding and overcoming loneliness are equally futile; though suppressed or neglected, the pain, the problem, is still there. You may lose yourself in a crowd, and yet be utterly lonely; you may be intensely active, but loneliness silently creeps upon you; put the book down, and it is there. Amusements and drinks cannot drown loneliness; you may temporarily evade it, but when the laughter and the effects of alcohol are over, the fear of loneliness returns. You may be ambitious and successful, you may have vast power over others, you may be rich in knowledge, you may worship and forget yourself in the rigmarole of rituals; but do what you will, the ache of loneliness continues. You may exist only for your son, for the Master, for the expression of your talent; but like the darkness, loneliness covers you. You may love or hate, escape from it according to your temperament and psychological demands; but loneliness is there, waiting and watching, withdrawing only to approach again.

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J. Krishnamurti

from his Commentaries on Living Series I

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to waiting

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You spend so much of your time

expecting to become

someone else

always someone 

who will be different 

someone to whom a moment

whatever moment it may be 

at last has come

and who has been

met and transformed

into no longer being you

and so has forgotten you

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meanwhile in your life

you hardly notice

the world around you

lights changing

sirens dying along the buildings

your eyes intent

on a sight you do not see yet

not yet there

as long as you

are only yourself

.

with whom as you

recall you were

never happy

to be left alone for long

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W.S. Merwin
from Present Company
art by Picasso

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to the happy few

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Do you know who you are

.

O you forever listed

under some other heading

when you are listed at all

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You whose addresses

when you have them 

are never sold except

for another reason

something else that is

supposed to identify you

.

who carry no card

stating that you are -

what would it say you were

to someone turning it over

looking perhaps for

a date or for

anything to go by

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you with no secret handshake

no proof of membership

no way to prove such a thing

even to yourselves

.

you without a word

of explanation

and only yourselves

as evidence

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~ W.S. Merwin

from Present Company

photo by edmund teske

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Where is he now

Where is he now, who leaving wealth behind

grew so bold in poverty

that he threw off his clothes before the bishop

and stood naked in the square?

The most inward and loving of all,

he came forth like a new beginning,

the brown-robed brother of your nightingales,

with his wonder and goodwill

and delight in Earth...

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

III,33, The book of Poverty and Death

translation by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows

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each our own death

God, give us each our own death,

the dying that proceeds

from each of our lives:

the way we loved,

the meanings we made,

our need.

III,6

For we are only the rind and the leaf,

The great death, that each of us carries inside,

is the fruit.

Everything enfolds it.

III,7

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

  The Book of Poverty and Death

translated by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows

can't see the path or any distance

.

It feels as though I make my way 

through massive rock

like a vain of ore

alone, encased.

I am so deep inside it

I can't see the path or any distance:

everything us close

and everything closing in on me

has turned to stone.

Since I still don't know enough about pain,

this terrible darkness makes me small.

If it's you, though -

press down hard on me, break in

that I may know the weight of your hand,

and you, the fullness of my cry.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

The Book of Poverty and Death III,1
translated by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows
(See interview with Joanna Macy)

he keeps on going

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Sometimes a man rises from the supper table

and goes outside.  And he keeps on going

because somewhere to the east there's a church.

His children bless his name as if he were dead.

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Another man stays at home until he dies,

stays with plates and glasses.

So then it is his children who go out

into the world, seeking the church that he forgot.

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~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from The Book of Pilgrimage, II,19

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The ocean moves

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The ocean moves, not because it wishes to move 

or because it knows that it is wise or good: 

it moves involuntarily, unconscious of movement.  

It is thus that you also will return to Tao, 

and when you have returned, you will not know it, 

because you yourself would have become Tao.

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~ Wu Wei

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The past, the future... sands blown by the wind

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Neither time nor space exists for the man who knows the eternal.

Space and time are real for the man who is yet imperfect and space is divided for him into dimensions, time into past, present and future. He looks behind him and sees his birth, his acquisitions, all that he has rejected. That past is being continually modified by the future which is ever being added to it. From the past man turns his eyes to the future where death, the unknown, the darkness, the mystery, await him.

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Fascinated by these he can no longer detach himself from them. The mystery of the future holds for him the fulfillment of all his desires, which the past has denied to him, and in his dreams he flies to that brilliant horizon where happiness must exist, where he must seek it.

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No one will ever pierce the infinite mystery of the future - impenetrable in its evanescent illusion - neither magician, prophet nor God! But on the contrary it will be the mystery which will engulf man, which will not let him escape, which will break the mainspring of his life.

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Life is not to be approached through the past, nor through the mirage of the future. Life cannot be approached through intermediaries, nor conquered for another.

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That discovery can only be made in the immediate present - by the individual for himself and not for others - by the individual who has become the eternal "I". That eternal "I" is created by the perfection of the self - perfection in which all things are contained, even human imperfections. Man, not yet having achieved that condition of life in the present, lives in the past which he regrets, lives in the future where he

hopes, but never in the present which he ignores. This is the case with all men.

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Balanced between the past and the future, the "I" is poised as a tiger ready to spring, as an eagle ready to fly, as the bow at the moment of releasing the arrow.

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This moment of equilibrium, of high tension, is "creation." It is the fullness of all life, it is immortality.

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The wind of the desert sweeps away all trace of the traveller.

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The sole imprint is the footstep of the present. The past, the future... sands blown by the wind.

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~ J. Krishnamurti

taken from: From Darkness to Light

1929

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They dwell in lowly spots

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The best, like water, 

Benefit all and do not compete. 

They dwell in lowly spots that everyone else scorns. 

Putting others before themselves, 

They find themselves in the foremost place 

And come very near to the Tao. 

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~ Lao Tzu

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A day comes

.

A day comes

when the mouth grows tired

of saying "I."

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Yet it is occupied

still by a self which must speak.

Which still desires,

is curious.

Which believes it has also a right.

.

What to do?

The tongue consults with the teeth

it knows will survive

both mouth and self,

.

which grin - it is their natural pose -

and say nothing.

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~ Jane Hirshfield

from "After"

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Time became as smooth and even as the current

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I worked too hard and furiously about the boat last week, trying to get the interior more or less complete, so as to get at the construction of a johnboat.  But I suddenly came to myself, realizing that none of it mattered a great deal, and I was losing much by my absorption in it.  We are really comfortable here, with the chores inside and out easy enough to do.  All that we plan to do will make for added comfort, convenience and neatness, but will come in time, and leisure must be had for other activities and for just living, or we will miss our way.

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Time became as smooth and even as the current outside our windows, and we began to realize our true aims in coming to the river... 
I had no theories to prove.

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~ Harlan Hubbard 

bookcover art by the author

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Tear: An Assay

A great philosopher is born, walks his lifetime's allotment of footsteps, and dies, but while he is living he has the demeanor and body and voice of a great clown.   Each of his propositions is heard, but met with snorts, guffaws, and the wiping of tears of laughter from the eyes.  Or perhaps it is the reverse: A great comic is born, walks the earth, and dies.  But her demeanor and body and voice are such that people listen gravely, they nod in silence at her words, are moved to weeping by the feelings her thoughts cause to rise.  The composition to tears of laughter and tears of grief is not, it seems, the same, though the tongue cannot tell this.  Different still the tears of outrage, or the tears that come from a misplace dust mote, errant eyelash, of flake of soot.  Each brought to the earth a great if different pleasure.  Each died unsatisfied and angry, though this too is not perceived.   And where does the mistake lie, if a mistake is granted at all?  In the person who refuses an inescapable fate, or in those who shed at his works their tears of subtly erroneous composition?

~ Jane Hirshfield
art by aiden-ivanov

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some wholly communal thing

.

Happy who know that behind all speeches

still the unspeakable lies;

that it's from there that greatness reaches

us in the form we prize!

Trusting not to the diversely fashioned

bridges of difference we outfling:

so that we gaze out of every impassioned

joy at some wholly communal thing.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Youth of Grass

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Yesterday in the hushed white sunlight 

down along the meadows by the river

through all the bright hours they cut the first hay

of this year to leave it tossed in long rows

leading into the twilight and long evening

while thunderheads grumbled from the horizon

and now the whole valley and the slopes around it 

that look down to the sky in the river

are fragrant with hay as this night comes in

and the owl cries across the new spaces

to the mice suddenly missing their sky

and so the youth of this spring all at once is over 

it has come upon us again taking us

once more by surprise just as we began

to believe that those fields would always be green

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~ W.S. Merwin

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