the in-turning flower of the fig

.

.

Within her dark robes

the nun is silent,

passion kept

between herself

and the largeness.

She moves

no differently

down granite stairs,

continues to sew poorly.

Questioned,

she would deny all.

.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from The Lives of the Heart

.

cure

.

It is less the medicine than the doctor that cures.

 

It is less the doctor than the organic consciousness that heals.

 

Always the organic consciousness is responsible for illness and for its cure.

 

The doctor inspires, gives the impulsion that leads to health, 

the medicine helps or hinders locally to that end.

 

Medicine-only is an attempt at healing despite the organic consciousness.

~ Wei Wu Wei

from Fingers Pointing Towards the Moon

Vincent

Vincent Willem van Gogh

Born March 30, 1853 in Groot-Zundert (today Zundert) in Breda, the Netherlands, 

Died, 29 July 1890 in Auvers-sur-Oise, France,

is one of the founders of modern painting. 

He left (according to current knowledge) 864 paintings and 1000 drawings,

which are all done in the last decade of his life. 

His major work is stylistically Post-Impressionism

exerted strong influence on later artists, particularly the Fauves and Expressionists. 

During his lifetime he sold only a few images, 

Belinda Thomson: Van Gogh - Paintings - The Masterpieces, p. 84

Some quotes by Vincent van Gogh:

.The more you love,

the more active you will be ....

Many a man has a big fire in his soul;

and no one comes to warm up to it ....

I want to flush, easily, seriously;

I want more soul and more love and more heart ....

Conversion is necessary

as the renewal of the leaves in the spring ....

.

with thanks to Semsakrebsler

.

lost in thought

.

interpretation 

is the beginning 

of misery

.

~ Benjamin Dean

more at zen poems

.

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

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

.

.

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

.

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;

.

and soon so many small stones, buried for a thousand years,

will feel themselves being touched.

.

~ Mary Oliver

from Why I wake early

.

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

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

.

.

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

.

a man receives only what he is ready to receive

.

.

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.

.

~ Henry David Thoreau

from a journal entry, 1860

art by Roderick Maclver

from Thoreau and the Art of Life

.

.

pure no-thing

.

God is pure no-thing,

concealed in now and here:

the less you reach for him,

the more he will appear.

.

~ Angelus Silesius

.

.

For the raindrop, joy is in entering the river

.

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)

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