Saturday, March 31, 2012

the decision






There is a moment before a shape
hardens, a color sets.
Before the fixative or heat of kiln.
The letter might still be taken
from the mailbox.
The hand held back by the elbow,
the word kept between the larynx pulse
and the amplifying drum-skin of the room's air.
The thorax of an ant is not as narrow.
The green coat on old copper weighs more.
Yet something slips through it -
looks around,
sets out in the new direction, for other lands.
Not into exile, not into hope. Simply changed.
As a sandy track-rut changes when called a Silk Road:
it cannot be after turned back from.






~ Jane Hirshfield
from Come, Thief
photo: US landing craft closes on Omaha Beach, 6 June 1944





the unknowable reality of things









~ Rupert Spira



Thursday, March 29, 2012

water







The water which sees the air through 
broken veins of the high mountain summits is suddenly 
abandoned by the power which brought it there, 
and escaping from these forces 
resumes its natural course in liberty. 

Likewise the water that rises 
from the low roots of the vine to its lofty head 
falls through the cut branches upon the roots and 
mounts anew to the place whence it fell. 





~ Leonardo Da Vinci
.

acting




Being unwise enough to have married her
I never knew when she was not acting.
‘I love you’ she would say; I heard the audiences
Sigh. ‘I hate you’; I could never be sure
They were still there. She was lovely. I
Was only the looking-glass she made up in.
I husbanded the rippling meadow
Of her body. Their eyes grazed nightly upon it.

Alone now on the brittle platform
Of herself she is playing her last role.
It is perfect. Never in all her career
Was she so good. And yet the curtain
Has fallen. My charmer, come out from behind
It to take the applause. Look, I am clapping too.





~ R. S. Thomas 
from The Poems of R. S. Thomas


Born Ronald Stuart Thomas in Cardiff, Wales, 1913. He was a Luddite, viewing modern conveniences as distractions that cause us to neglect our spiritual health. He and his wife Elsi lived in a small and almost primitive stone cottage for much of their marriage, and their son, Gwydion, remembered his father preaching against the evils of the refrigerator and the washing machine from his pulpit. His poems were as austere as his lifestyle, and he once wrote: "A recurring ideal, I find, is that of simplicity. At times there comes the desire to write with great precision and clarity, words so simple and moving that they bring tears to the eyes."  Mr. Thomas died in 2000.

~ comments from  writers almanac


Wednesday, March 28, 2012

allow yourself to become it



383838


The highest good is not to seek to do good,
but to allow yourself to become it.
The ordinary person seeks to do good things,
and finds that they can not do them continually.

The Master does not force virtue on others,
thus she is able to accomplish her task.
The ordinary person who uses force,
will find that they accomplish nothing.

The kind person acts from the heart,
and accomplishes a multitude of things.
The righteous person acts out of pity,
yet leaves many things undone.
The moral person will act out of duty,
and when no one will respond
will roll up his sleeves and use force.

When the Tao is forgotten, there is righteousness.
When righteousness is forgotten, there is morality.
When morality is forgotten, there is the law.
The law is the husk of faith,
and trust is the beginning of chaos.

Our basic understandings are not from the Tao
because they come from the depths of our misunderstanding.
The master abides in the fruit and not in the husk.
She dwells in the Tao,
and not with the things that hide it.
This is how she increases in wisdom.




~ Lao Tzu
from the Tao Te Ching
translation by j.h.mcdonald




live from your own center





The divine manifestation is ubiquitous, 
Only our eyes are not open to it. . . . 
Awe is what moves us forward. . . .

Live from your own center. . . . 
The divine lives within you. 
The separateness apparent in the world is secondary. 
Beyond the world of opposites is an unseen, 
but experienced, unity and identity in us all.

Today the planet is the only proper “in group.” 
Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. 
We cannot cure the world of sorrows, 
but we can choose to live in joy.

You must return with the bliss and integrate it. 
The return is seeing the radiance is everywhere. 
The world is a match for us. 
We are a match for the world. 
The spirit is the bouquet of nature. . . . 

Sanctify the place you are in. Follow your bliss. . . .







~ Joseph Campbell


sower of science, center of religion





The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience
is the sensation of the mystical.
It is the sower of all true science.
He to whom this emotion is a stranger,
who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe,
is as good as dead.

To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists,
manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty,
which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - 
this knowledge, this feeling,
is at the center of true religion.







~ Albert Einstein


each curve







There are so many positions of love:
each curve on a
branch,

the thousand ways your eyes can hold us,
the infinite shapes each mind
can draw,

the spring orchestra of scents and sounds wafting through the air,
the currents of light combusting like
passionate
lips,

the revolution of the universe’s skirt, whose folds
contain other worlds,

our every sigh that falls against
His inconceivably close,
omnipresent,
divine
body









~Hafiz
from Love Poems From God
Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West 
by Daniel Ladinsky
.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

only in the double kingdom





Only the man who has raised his strings
among the dark ghosts also
can sense it and give 
the everlasting praise.

Only he who has eaten poppy
with the dead, from their poppy,
will never lose even
his most delicate sound.

Even though images in the pool
seem so blurry:
grasp the main thing.

Only in the double kingdom, there
alone, do voices become
undying and tender.



~ Rainer Maria Rilke
translation by Robert Bly
from Sonnets to Orpheus
art by alex orlov




near field






This is not something new or kept secret
the tilled ground unsown in late spring
the dead are not separate from the living
each has one foot in the unknown
and cannot speak for the other
the field tells none of its turned story
it lies under its low cloud like a waiting river
the dead make this out of their hunger
out of what they had been told
out of the pains and shadows
and bowels of animals
out of turning and 
coming back singing
about another time



~ W. S. Merwin
from The Shadow of Sirius




april and silence





Spring lies abandoned.
A ditch the color of dark violet
moves alongside me
giving no images back.

The only thing that shines
are some yellow flowers.

I am carried inside
my own shadow like a violin
in its black case.

The only thing I want to say
hovers just out of reach
like the family silver
at the pawnbroker's.





~ Tomas Transtromer
translation by Robert Bly
from The Half Finished Heaven
photo by David Gray, Reuters




Monday, March 26, 2012

being human: a reflection





~ Jane Hirshfield



Sunday, March 25, 2012

a river tugs






A river tugs at whatever is within reach, trying to set it afloat and carry it downstream.  Living trees are undermined and washed away.  No piece of driftwood is safe, though stranded high up the bank; the river will rise to it, and away it will go.

The river extends this power of drawing all things with it even to the imagination of those who live on its banks.  Who can long watch the ceaseless lapsing of a river's current without conceiving a desire to set himself adrift, and, like the driftwood which glides past, float with the stream clear to the final ocean?





~ Harlan Hubbard
from Shantyboat - A River Way of Life



Saturday, March 24, 2012

the one close to me now





The one close to me now,
even my own body -
these too
will soon become clouds,
floating in different directions.





~ Izumi Shikibu
from The Ink Dark Moon
translation by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani


Onono Komachi and Izumi Shikibu were both Japanese poets of the Heian Period. 
 The arts of the Heian Period are marked with a definite feminine sensibility. 
Because the Chinese characters (which were used in writing Japanese) 
were seen as inappropriate to women, 
they developed a simplified and elegant style of writing/calligraphy 
that became known as Hiragana or "onna de"... "feminine hand". 


~ comments from the literature network




corruption of wholeness






Can this be taught to the students: 
to remain with the fact, the actual happening now, whether psychologically or externally?
 Knowledge is not the fact; it is about the fact and that has its proper place, 
but knowledge prevents perception of what actually is; 
then corruption takes place.

This is really very important to understand. Ideals are considered noble, exalted, of great purposeful significance, and what is actually happening is considered merely sensory, worldly and of lesser value. Schools the world over have some exalted purpose, ideal; so they are educating the students in corruption.

What corrupts the mind? We are using the word mind to imply the senses, the capacity to think, and the brain that stores all memories and experiences as knowledge. This total movement is the mind. The conscious as well as the unconscious, the so-called super-consciousness - the whole of this is the mind. We are asking what are the factors, the seeds of corruption in all this? We said ideals corrupt. Knowledge also corrupts the mind. Knowledge, particular or extensive, is the movement of the past, and when the past overshadows the actual, corruption takes place. Knowledge, projected into the future and directing what is happening now, is corruption. We are using the word corruption to mean that which is being broken up, that which is not taken as a whole. The fact can never be broken up; the fact can never be limited by knowledge. The completeness of the fact opens the door to infinity. Completeness cannot be divided; it is not self-contradictory; it cannot divide itself. Completeness, wholeness, is infinite movement.

Imitation, conformity, is one of the great factors of corruption of the mind; the example, the hero, the savior, the guru, is the most destructive factor of corruption. To follow, to obey, to conform, deny freedom. Freedom is from the beginning, not at the end. It is not to conform, to imitate, accept first and eventually find freedom. That is the spirit of totalitarianism, whether of the guru or the priest. This is the cruelty, the ruthlessness, of the dictator, of the authority, of the guru or of the high priest.

So authority is corruption. Authority is the breaking up of integrity, the whole, the complete - the authority of a teacher in a school, the authority of a purpose, of an ideal, of the one who says I know, the authority of an institution. The pressure of authority in any form is the distorting factor of corruption. Authority basically denies freedom. It is the function of a true teacher to instruct, point out, inform, without the corrupting influence of authority. The authority of comparison destroys. When one student is compared to another, both are being hurt. To live without comparison is to have integrity.




~ J. Krishnamurti
from Letters to Schools Volume One 1st September, 1978