Thursday, March 31, 2011

lost in thought






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interpretation 
is the beginning 
of misery

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~ Benjamin Dean
more at zen poems


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Wednesday, March 30, 2011

when love itself comes to kiss you






When love itself comes to kiss you,
don't hold back!  When the king

goes hunting, the forest smiles.
Now the king has become the place

and all the players, prey, bystander,
bow, arrow, hand and release.  How

does that feel?  Last night's dream
enters these open eyes.  When we die

and turn to dust, each particle will
be the whole.  You hear a mote whirl

taking form?  My music.  Love, calm,
patient.  The Friend has waded down

into existence, gotten stuck, and 
will not be seen again outside of

this.  We sometimes make spiderwebs
of smoke and saliva, fragile thought -

packets.  Leave thinking to the one
who gave intelligence .  In silence

there is eloquence.  Stop weaving,
and watch how the pattern improves.




~ Rumi
from the soul of Rumi
translations by Coleman Barks
photo by elliot erwitt


Tuesday, March 29, 2011

only the lowest servant of the kingdom, is worthy to become its ruler






Water is the softest and most yielding substance.
Yet nothing is better than water,
for overcoming the hard and rigid,
because nothing can compete with it.

Everyone knows that the soft and yielding
overcomes the rigid and hard,
but few can put this knowledge into practice.

Therefore the Master says:
"Only he who is the lowest servant of the kingdom,
is worthy to become its ruler.
He who is willing to tackle the most unpleasant tasks,
is the best ruler in the world."

True sayings seem contradictory.


~ Lao Tzu
from the Tao Te Ching


lingering in happiness

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After rain after many days without rain,
it stays cool, private and cleansed, under the trees,
and the dampness there, married now to gravity,
falls branch to branch, leaf to leaf, down to the ground
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where it will disappear - but not, of course, vanish
except to our eyes.  The roots of the oaks will have their share,
and the white threads of the grasses, and the cushion of moss;
a few drops, round as pearls, will enter the mole's tunnel;
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and soon so many small stones, buried for a thousand years,
will feel themselves being touched.

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~ Mary Oliver
from Why I wake early

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If only for once it were still





If only for once it were still.
If the not quite right and the why this
could be muted, and the neighbor's laughter,
and the static my senses make -
if all of it didn't keep me from coming awake -

Then in one vast thousandfold thought
I could think you up to where thinking ends.

I could possess you,
even for the brevity of a smile,
to offer you 
to all that lives,
in gladness.



~ Rainer Maria Rilke
from The Book of Monastic Life, I,7



Sunday, March 27, 2011

the great longing









Here I sit between my brother the mountain and my sister the sea.

We three are one in loneliness, and the love that binds us together
 is deep and strong and strange.  Nay, it is deeper than my sister's depth
 and stronger than my brother's strength,
 and stranger than the strangeness of my madness.

Aeons upon aeons have passed since the first grey dawn made us
 visible to one another; and though we have seen the birth and the fullness
 and the death of many world, we are still eager and young.

We are  young and eager and yet we are mateless and unvisited, 
and though we lie in unbroken half embrace, we are uncomforted. 
 And what comfort is there for controlled desire and unspent passion?  
Whence shall come the flaming god to warm my sister's bed?  
And what she-torrent shall quench my brother's fire? 
And who is the woman that shall command my heart?

In the stillness of the night my sister murmurs in her sleep
 the fire-god's unknown name, and my brother call 
afar upon the cool and distant goddess. 
 But upon whom I call in my sleep I know not


Here I sit between my brother the mountain and my sister the sea. 
 We three are one in loneliness, and the love 
that binds us together is deep and strong and strange.






~ Kahlil Gibran
from Poems, Parables and Drawings
drawing by the author



for a time of change









The mind of time is hard to read.
We can never predict what it will bring,
Nor even from all that is already gone
Can we say what form it finally takes;
For time gathers its moments secretly.
Often we only know it's time to change
When a force has built inside the heart
That leaves us uneasy as we are.

Perhaps the work we do has lost its soul
Or the love where we once belonged
Calls nothing alive in us anymore.

We drift through this gray, increasing nowhere
Until we stand before a threshold we know
We have to cross to come alive once more.

May we have the courage to take the step
Into the unknown that beckons us;
Trust that a richer life awaits us there,
That we will lose nothing
But what has already died;
Feel the deeper knowing in us sure
Of all that is about to be born beyond
The pale frames where we stayed confined,
Not realizing how such vacant endurance
Was bleaching our soul's desire.







~ John O'Donohue
from To Bless the Space Between Us



the remains


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I empty myself of the names of others.
I empty my pockets, I empty my shoes and leave them beside
the road. At night I turn back the clocks; I open the family
album and look at myself as a boy.
.
What good does it do? The hours have done their job.
I say my own name. I say goodbye.
The words follow each other downwind.
I love my wife but send her away.
.
My parents rise out of their thrones
into the milky rooms of clouds. How can I sing?
Time tells me what I am. I change and I am the same.
I empty myself of my life and my life remains.
.

~ Mark Strand
with thanks to melancholynotes


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Saturday, March 26, 2011

a man receives only what he is ready to receive


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A man receives only what he is ready to receive,
whether physically or intellectually or morally,
as animals conceive at certain seasons their kind only.
We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.

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~ Henry David Thoreau
from a journal entry, 1860
art by Roderick Maclver
from Thoreau and the Art of Life

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Wednesday, March 23, 2011

pure no-thing




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God is pure no-thing,
concealed in now and here:
the less you reach for him,
the more he will appear.

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~ Angelus Silesius

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For the raindrop, joy is in entering the river


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For the raindrop, joy is in entering the river -
Unbearable pain becomes its own cure.

Travel far enough into sorrow, tears turn to sighing;
In this way we learn how water can die into air.

When, after heavy rain, the stormclouds disperse,
Is it not that they've wept themselves clear to the end?

If you want to know a miracle, how wind can polish a mirror,
Look: the shining glass grows green in spring.

It's the rose's unfolding, Ghalib, that creates the desire to see -
In every color and circumstance, may the eyes be open for what comes.





~ Ghalib (1797-1869)



Monday, March 21, 2011

so many skins









A human being has so many skins inside, 
covering the depths of the heart. 
 
We know so many things, but we don’t know ourselves! 
Why, thirty or forty skins or hides,
as thick and hard as an ox’s or a bear’s, 
cover the soul. 
 
Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there. 
 
 
 

~ Meister Eckhart






ecstasy: Czechoslovakia, 1933





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The actress was only seventeen
and so the director arranged
to have her pricked lightly with pins
at the needed moments.


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~ Jane Hirshfield


I write these words to delay






What can I do with these thoughts,
given me as a dog is given her flock?
Or perhaps it is the reverse -
my life the unruly sheep, being herded.
At night,
all lie down on the mountain grasses,
while mirror sheep, a mirror guard-dog
follow one another through rock outcrops,
across narrow streams.  The drink and graze by starlight.
This morning, waking to unaccustomed calmness,
I write these words to stay in that silent, unfevered existence,
to delay the other words that are waiting.




~ Jane Hirshfield
from After



Sunday, March 20, 2011

his name is God-with-them




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Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth ...
Here God lives among men.
He will make his home among them; 
they shall be his people and he will be their God;
his name is God-with-them.
He will wipe away all tears from their eyes;
there will be no more death, and no more mourning and sadness. 
 The world of the past has gone.
Then the One sitting on the throne spoke:
Now I am making the whole of creation new...

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~ Revelations 21: 1-5

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