~ Robert Spira
Saturday, August 29, 2015
Friday, August 28, 2015
something else
Whatever it is hangs over us,
wants us to keep on gliding forward,
as if a compass nestled in the heart,
as if a hidden magnet were always calling to
the bits of iron which swim in the blood,
or a boat was being drawn ahead
by a canal-man, with his steady line and
unwavering eye,
not asking why, just doing it,
even on the days we awaken
amidst the ruins of the spirit,
and have nothing to offer,
except a longing for the smell of hyacinths
and something else we can't fully recall.
~ Dorothy Walters
from Marrow of Flame
who
Whoever went in
naked to the core.
Whoever cast aside
all the armor.
all the fastenings.
Who could breathe air thin as flame.
Drink water pressed from blossoms,
rose petals
or violets.
Whoever stayed in that
darkness so dark
it became a circle of seeing.
Who could hear
the silent flute note
of the stilled wind,
hold rock turning to light.
~ Dorothy Walters
from Marrow of Flame
Sunday, August 2, 2015
Uzayr
The sons of Uzayr, were looking for their father.
They have grown old, and their father
has miraculously grown young!
They meet him and ask, "Pardon us, sir,
but have you seen Uzayr? We hear
that he's supposed to be coming along
this road today." "Yes," says Uzayr,
"he's right behind me." One of his sons
replies, "That's good news." The other
falls on the ground. He has recognized
his father. "What do you mean news?
We're already inside the sweetness
of his presence." To the mind
there is such a thing as news, whereas
to inner knowing , it's all in the middle
of its happening. To doubters, this is
a pain. To believers, it's gospel.
To the lover and the visionary
it's life as it's being lived.
~ Rumi
Coleman Barks translation
Friday, July 31, 2015
Sunday, July 26, 2015
nothing ahead
Lovers think they're looking for each other,
but there's only one search: wandering
this world is wandering that,
both inside one
transparent sky. In here there is
no dogma and no heresy.
The miracle of Jesus is himself, not what he said
or did about the future. Forget the future.
I'd worship someone who could do that.
On the way you may want to look back, or not.
But if you can say, There's nothing ahead,
there will be nothing there.
Stretch your arms
and take hold the cloth of your clothes
with both hands. The cure for pain is in the pain.
Good and bad are mixed. If you don't have both,
you don't belong with us.
When one of us gets lost,
is not here, he must be inside us. There's no
place like that anywhere in the world.
~ Rumi
from The Book of Love
translations by Coleman Barks
where you love from
Look inside and find where a person loves from.
That's the reality, not what they say.
~ Hypocrities
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
the center of the circle
Forget about knowledge and wisdom,
and people will be a hundred times better off.
Throw away charity and righteousness,
and people will return to brotherly love.
Throw away profit and greed,
and there won't be any thieves.
These three are superficial and aren't enough
to keep us at the center of the circle, so we must also:
Embrace simplicity.
Put others first.
Desire little.
~ Lao-tzu
Tao Teh Ching
Mcdonald translation
~ Lao-tzu
Tao Teh Ching
Mcdonald translation
Friday, July 10, 2015
Friday, June 26, 2015
who knows what is going on
Who knows what is going on on the other side of each hour?
How many times the sunrise was
there, behind a mountain!
How many times the brilliant cloud piling up far off
was already a golden body full of thunder!
This rose was poison.
That sword gave life.
I was thinking of a flowery meadow
at the end of a road,
and found myself in the slough.
I was thinking of the greatness of what was human,
and found myself in the divine.
~ Juan Ramon Jimenez
English version by Robert Bly
with thanks to Poetry Chaikhana
with thanks to Poetry Chaikhana
Sunday, June 21, 2015
the door
One day you’ll see:
you’ve been knocking on a door
without a house.
You’ve been waiting, shivering, yelling
words of daring and hope.
One day you’ll see:
there is no-one on the other side
except, as ever, the jubilant ocean
that won’t shatter ceramically like a dream
when you and I shatter.
But not yet. Now
you wait outside, watching
the blue arches of mornings
that will break but are now perfect.
Underneath on tip-toe
pass the faces, speaking to you,
saying ‘you’, ‘you’, ‘you’,
smiling, waving, arriving
in unfailing chronology.
One day you’ll doubt your movements,
you will shudder
at the accuracy of your sudden age.
You will ache for slow beauty
to save you from your quick, quick life.
But not yet. Hope
fills the yawn of time.
Blue surrounds you. Now let’s say
you see a door and knock,
and wait for someone to hear.
~ Kapka Kassabova
with thanks to Love is a Place
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
magnetism
The Self is like a powerful magnet within us.
It draws us gradually to itself, though we imagine we are going to It of our own accord:
when we are near enough, It puts an end to our activities,
makes us still, and then swallows up our personal current,
thus killing our wrong personality.
It overwhelms the intellect and over floods the whole being.
We think we are meditating upon It and developing towards It,
whereas the truth is that we are iron filings and It is the Atman-magnet
that is pulling us towards Itself. Thus the process of finding
the Self is a form of Divine magnetism.
~ Ramana Maharshi
Monday, May 25, 2015
in succession, in division
We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles.
Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence;
the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related;
the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist,
and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing
and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen,
the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one.
We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree;
but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
from the essay The Over-Soul
art by gene kloss
Saturday, May 16, 2015
on friendship and love
Such a friendship has no model but itself, and can only be compared to itself. It was not one special consideration, nor two, nor three, nor four, nor a thousand; it was some mysterious quintessence of all this mixture which possessed itself of my will, and led it to plunge and lose itself in his, which possessed itself of his whole will, and led it, with a similar hunger and a like impulse, to plunge and lose itself in mine. I may truly say lose, for it left us with nothing that was our own, nothing that was either his or mine.
~ Montaigne
from Essays of Michel de Montaigne
In any true love - a mother's for her child, a husband's for his wife, a friend's for a friend - there is an excess energy that always wants to be in motion. Moreover, it seems to move not simply from one person to another but through them toward something else. ("All I know now / is the more he loved me the more I loved the world" - Spencer Reece.) That is why we can be so baffled and overwhelmed by such love (and I don't mean merely when we fall in love; in fact, I'm talking more of other, more durable relationships): it wants to be more than it is; it cries out inside of us to make it more than it is.
~ Christian Wiman
from My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer
Friday, May 15, 2015
we say
We say release, and radiance, and roses,
and echo upon everything that's known;
and yet, behind the world our names enclose is
the nameless: our true archetype and home.
The sun seems male, and earth is like a woman,
the field is humble, and the forest proud;
but over everything we say, inhuman,
moves the forever-undetermined god.
We grow up; but the world remains a child.
Star and flower, in silence, watch us go.
And sometimes we appear to be the final
exam they must succeed on. And they do.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
translation by Stephen Mitchell
photo by Carsten Meyerdierks
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