a stream I go a-fishing in

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. 
 I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is.
 Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky,
 whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter
 of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not
 as wise as the day I was born.

~ Henry David Thoreau

from Walden: Where I lived and What I lived for

 

 

 

 

the path

The path to heaven lies through heaven,
and all the way to heaven is heaven.

 

~ Catherine of Siena

with thanks to Love is a Place

hoeing

As I drew a still fresher soil about the rows with my how, I disturbed the ashes of unchronicled nations who in primeval years lived under these heavens, and their small implements of war and hunting were brought to the light of this modern day.  They lay mingled with other natural stones, some of which bore the marks of having been burned by Indian fires, and some by the sun, and also bits of pottery and glass brought hither by the recent cultivators of the soil.  When my hoe tinkled against the stones, that music echoed to the woods and the sky, and was an accompaniment to my labor which yielded an instant and immeasurable crop.  It was no longer beans that I hoed, nor I that hoed beans...

~ Henry David Thoreau

from Walden, The Bean-Field

art by Clotilde Espinosa

wind on water

A field of water betrays a spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving

new life and motion from above.  It is intermediate in its nature between land

and sky.  On land only the grass and trees wave, but the water itself is rippled

by the wind. I see where the breeze dashes across it by the streaks or flakes of

light.  It is remarkable that we can look down on its surface.  We shall, perhaps, 

look down thus on the surface of air at length, and mark where a still subtler

spirit sweeps over it.

 ~ Henry David Thoreau

excerpt from Walden, the ponds

no such thing

There is no such thing as a person.
There are only restrictions and limitations.
The sum total of these defines the person.

You think you know yourself when you know what you are.
But you never know who you are. The person merely appears to be, like the space within the pot appears to have the shape and volume and smell of the pot.

See that you are not what you believe yourself to be.
Fight with all the strength at your disposal against the idea that you are nameable and describable.

You are not.

Refuse to think of yourself in terms of this or that.
There is no other way out of misery, which you have created for yourself through blind acceptance without investigation.

Suffering is a call for enquiry, all pain needs investigation.
Don’t be too lazy to think.





~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

with thanks to Love is a Place

 

no man's land

But oh!
How far I have to go to find You in Whom I have already arrived!
For now, oh my God, it is to You alone that I can talk,
because nobody else will understand.
I cannot bring any other on this earth
into the cloud where I dwell in Your light,
that is,
Your Darkness,
where I am lost and abashed.

I cannot explain to any other
the anguish which is Your joy
nor the loss which is the possession of You,
nor the distance from all things
which is the arrival in You.
nor the death which is the birth in You
because I do not know anything about it myself
and all I know
is that I wish it were over
-- I wish it were begun.

You have contradicted everything.
You have left me in no man's land.

~ Thomas Merton
from Dancing in the Water of Life

compassion

~ Lucinda Williams

roses underfoot

If anyone asks you to say who you are,

say without hesitation, soul

within soul within soul.

There's a pearl diver who does not know

how to swim!  No matter.

Pearls are handed him on the beach.

 We lovers laugh to hear, "This should be

more that and that more this,"

coming from people sitting in a wagon

tilted in a ditch.

Going in search of the heart, I found

a huge rose, and roses under all our feet!

How to say this to someone who denies it?

The robe we wear is the sky's cloth.

Everything is soul and flowering.

~ Rumi

Coleman Barks translation

art by Hilary Williams

 

the winds will blow their own freshness into you

Ansel Adams - Winter Sunrise

"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, 

places to play in and pray in, 

where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

...

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. 

Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. 

The winds will blow their own freshness into you, 

and the storms their energy, 

while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn."

~ John Muir

John Muir was one of the earliest advocates of the national park idea, and its most eloquent spokesman. Born in Dunbar, Scotland, on April 21st 1838, he moved with his family to a Wisconsin farm in 1849. Muir's father, an itinerant Presbyterian minister, treated him harshly and insisted that he memorize the Bible. By age 11, he was able to recite three-quarters of the Old Testament by heart, and all of the New Testament.

Muir studied botany and geology at the University of Wisconsin and had a natural flair for inventions. In 1867, after recovering from a factory accident that left him temporarily blinded for several months, he cut short a promising career in industry to walk from Indiana to Florida, creating botanical sketches on his way. From there he sailed to California and then walked from San Francisco to the Sierra Nevada – the "Range of Light" that would transform his life with his "unconditional surrender" to nature.

After working as a sheepherder in the high country for a season, Muir took a job in the Yosemite Valley in 1869, building a sawmill for James Mason Hutchings. In his free time, he roamed Yosemite, where he developed a scientific theory that the valley had been carved by glaciers. Muir felt a spiritual connection to nature; he believed that mankind is just one part of an interconnected natural world, not its master, and that God is revealed through nature.

Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir at Glacier Point, Yosemite National Park, 1903

To preach his gospel of nature, he moved to Oakland in 1873 to write articles for leading magazines like Overland Monthly, Scribner's and Harper's Magazine. Muir's articles made him nationally famous. He married Louie Wanda Strentzel and turned her family's farm in Martinez, California, into a profitable orchard business. But he grew restless to immerse himself in nature again, and, at Louie's urging, he traveled to Alaska's Glacier Bay and Washington's Mount Rainier. His writings brought national attention to two more places that would eventually become national parks.

Muir would also champion protection of the Petrified Forest and the Grand Canyon in Arizona. He was the public voice for setting aside the high country around Yosemite Valley as a national park in 1890, as well as for General Grant and Sequoia national parks. His efforts to make a large park in the Kings Canyon region of central California would not be successful, but later park supporters would take up the cause.

Muir's three-night camping trip with President Theodore Roosevelt in 1903 could be considered the most significant camping trip in conservation history. He was able to persuade Roosevelt to return Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove to federal protection as part of Yosemite National Park. The trip would have a lasting impact on the president.

Muir's final crusade, to prevent the city of San Francisco from building a dam and creating a massive water reservoir in Yosemite's Hetch Hetchy Valley, ended in bitter defeat with federal approval of the project in 1913. Muir died a year later, on Christmas Eve, at age 76.

Muir was a founder and the first president of the Sierra Club; Muir Woods National Monument, a grove of redwoods north of San Francisco, is named in his honor.

"If you think about all the gains our society has made, from independence to now, it wasn't government. It was activism. People think, 'Oh, Teddy Roosevelt established Yosemite National Park, what a great president.' BS. It was John Muir who invited Roosevelt out and then convinced him to ditch his security and go camping. It was Muir, an activist, a single person." 

~ Yvon Chouinard

 Patagonia founder and outdoor enthusiast

wind in the vast sky

If someone asks

about the mind of this monk,

say it is no more than

a passage of wind

in the vast sky.

~ Ryokan

first he looked confused

I could not lie anymore so I started to call my dog "God."

First he looked

confused,

Then he started smiling, then he even

danced.

I kept at it: now he doesn't even

bite.

I am wondering if this

might work on

people?

~ Tukaram

translated by Daniel Ladinsky

(c.1608-1649) Born in Dehu not far from Poona, his poems chronicle his discovery

of God within and are written with a humor similar to Hafiz.

within the heart

The little space within the heart
is as great as the vast 
universe.
The heavens and the earth are there,
and the sun and the moon and
the stars.
Fire and lightning and winds are there,
and all that now is and
all that is not.

 ~ The Upanishads 

would you?

~ Sweet Honey and the Rock

I wish I could speak like music

I wish I could speak like music.

I wish I could put the swaying splendor

Of the fields into words

So that you could hold Truth

Against your body

And dance.

I am trying the best I can

With this crude brush, the tongue, 

To cover you with light

.

I wish I could speak like divine music.

I want to give you the sublime rhythms

Of this earth and the sky's limbs

As they joyously spin and surrender,

Surrender

Against God's luminous breath.

Hafiz Wants you to hold me

Against your precious

Body

And dance

Dance.

–Hafiz

from The Gift: Poems by Hafiz

translations by Daniel Ladinsky

art by van gogh

now all the fingers of this tree(darling)have

now all the fingers of this tree(darling)have

hands, and all the hands have people; and

more each particular person is(my love)

alive than every world can understand

and now you are and i am now and we're

a mystery which will never happen again,

a miracle which has never happened before–

and shining this our now must come to then

our then shall be some darkness during which

fingers are without hands; and i have no

you: and all trees are(any more than each

leafless)its silent in forevering snow

—but never fear(my own, my beautiful

my blossoming)for also then's until

luminous tendril of celestial wish

luminous tendril of celestial wish

(whying diminutive bright deathlessness

to these my not themselves believing eyes

adventuring,enormous nowhere from)

querying affirmation; virginal

immediacy of precision: more

and perfectly more most etereal

silence through twilight's mystery made flesh–

dreamslender exquisite white firstful flame

—new moon! as(by the miracle of your

sweet innocence refuted)clumsy some

dull cowardice called a world vanishes,

teach disappearing also me the keen

illimitable secret of begin 

~ e. e. cummings

to the new year

With what stillness at last

you appear in the valley

your first sunlight reaching down

to touch the tips of a few

high leaves that do not stir

as though they had not noticed

and did not know you at all

then the voice of a dove calls

from far away in itself

to the hush of the morning

so this is the sound of you

here and now whether or not

anyone hears it this is

where we have come with our age

our knowledge such as it is

and our hopes such as they are

invisible before us

untouched and still possible

~ W. S. Merwin

from Present Company

nothing I can give you which you have not

Most Noble Contessina:

I salute you. I am your friend, and my love for you goes deep.

There is nothing I can give you which you have not. 
But there is much, very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take. 
No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. 

Take heaven! 

No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant. 

Take peace! 

The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. 

Take Joy! 

There is radiance and glory in darkness, could we but see.
 And to see, we have only to look. I beseech you to look!

Life is so generous a giver. But we, judging its gifts by their covering, 
cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, 
and you will find beneath it a living splendor, 
woven of love by wisdom, with power. 

Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel's hand that brings it to you. 
Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, believe me, 
that angel's hand is there.

The gift is there and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. 
Your joys, too, be not content with them as joys. 
They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty beneath its covering, 
that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven. 
Courage then to claim it; that is all! 
But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together, 
wending through unknown country home.

And so, at this time, I greet you, not quite as the world sends greetings, 
but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you, 
now and forever, the day breaks and shadows flee away.

your servant,

 Fra Giovanni

~ Ernest Temple Hargrove

The name of a certain "16th century monk" is familiar now to millions of people but, he never lived; he was created by an English barrister, Ernest Temple Hargrove.  With the arrival of Christmas season each year, the monk, Fra Giovanni, becomes better known, and his creator drifts farther into obscurity.  This is the way Mr. Hargrove wanted it.  Hargrove was born into a distinguished English family, came to the United States as a young man and spent many years in religious endeavors, particularly in the field of writing.

Before his death in 1939 Hargrove composed a Christmas greeting to a friend, writing in literary style that gave a medieval  flavor to his message.  The greeting took the form of a letter from a monk to an Italian countess.  According to a close friend, G.M.W. Kobbe of New York, Hargrove secured no copyright, feeling that if his greeting carried a real message there should be no impediment to it's circulation. With the passage of years, the letter is now thought of as the perfect Christmas card by a great host of appreciative readers, many of whom believe Fra Giovanni was a real person.

The monk is imaginary but the letter and the message are real.

~ Max L. Christensen - 1997

Ernest Temple Hargrove, of England, married to Amy Virginia Tehula Neresheimer, the daughter of Emil August Neresheimer, NYC diamond broker, on Tuesday, January 18, 1899, Church of the Holy Apostles, NYC.They had at least two children, William A, born in about 1902, and a daughter Joan, born about 1905.Hargrove was a prominent figure in the NY Theosophical Society, and later in life was known to have resided as a caretaker of the Chapel of the Comforter, located at 10 Horation St. in NYC.he eventually died in 1939.

no words

People come a long way to reach Parrot Lake

anxious to ask about practice

this old monk tells them the truth

the gatha that frees you has no words

~ Stonehouse

from The Zen Works of Stonehouse

Poems and Talks of a 14th Century Chinese Hermit

translated by Red Pine

behind the word consciousness

~ Mauro Bergonzi

companion of my heart

You are the companion of my heart

Though my body I offer to those who desire it.

My body is friendly to guests

But you the companion of my heart

Are the guest of my soul.

~ Rabia

(712 - 801)

After a life of hardship, she spontaneously achieved a state of self-realization. 
When asked by Shaikh Hasan al-Basri how she discovered the secret, she responded by stating:

"You know of the how, but I know of the how-less."

the present has abated its urgencies

For people who live in the country there is a charming freedom in such days. One is free of obligations to the ground.  There is no outside work that one ought to do, simply because, with the ground frozen deep and covered with snow, no such work is possible.  Growth has stopped; there is plenty of hay and grain in the barn; the present has abated its urgencies.  The mind may again turn freely to the past and look back on the way it has come.

This morning has been bearing down out of the future toward this bit of riverbank forever. And for perhaps as long, in a sense, my life has been approaching from the opposite direction. The approach of a man's life out of the past is history, and the approach of time out of the future is mystery. Their meeting is the present, and it is consciousness, the only time life is alive. The endless wonder of this meeting is what causes the mind, in its inward liberty of a frozen morning, to turn back and question and remember. The world is full of places. Why is it that I am here?

- Wendell Berry

from The Long-Legged House

photo by Harry Callahan

with thanks to whiskey river

a star on the horizon of my heart

Ever in my life have I sought thee with my songs. 

It was they who led me from door to door, 

and with them have I felt about me, 

searching and touching my world.

It was my songs that taught me all the lessons I ever learnt; 

they showed me secret paths, 

they brought before my sight many a star on the horizon of my heart.

They guided me all the day long to the mysteries of the country of pleasure and pain, 

and, at last, 

to what palace gate have they brought me in the evening at the end of my journey?

~ Rabindranath Tagore

art by van gogh

are animals thinking and feeling?

~ Carl Safina

the green cookstove

A lonely man once sat on a large flat stone.

When he lifted it, he saw a kitchen: a green

Enamel range with big claw feet, familiar.

Someone lives in that room, cooking and cackling.

"I saw her once," Virgil said. "She was Helen's

Younger sister."  Helen's betrayed husband

Sits by the window, peeling garlic cloves,

And throwing crusts to Plymouth Rocks.

We'll never understand this, Somewhere below

The flat stone of the skull, a carnivorous couple

Lives and plans future wars.  Are we innocent?

These wars don't happen by accident - they occur

Too regularly. How often do we lift the plate

At the bottom of our brain and throw some garlic

And grain down to the kitchen?  "Keep cooking,

My dears," "Something good will come of this."

~ Robert Bly

from Morning Poems

who one is

One never knows who one is. 

The others tell you who you are, 

don't they? 

And as you're told so a million times 

if you live a long life, in the end you don't know at all 

who you are. Everyone says something different. 

You yourself also say something 

different each new moment.

~  Thomas Bernhard

first step

The first step in love

is losing your head.

After the petty ego

you then give up your life

and bear the calamity.

With this behind you, proceed:

Polish the ego's rust

from the mirror

of your self

~ Fakhr al-Din Iraqi

from Love's Alchemy

translations by David and Sabrineh Fideler

glow

Not a single soul lacks

a pathway to you.

There's no stone,

no flower-

not a single piece of straw-

lacking your existence.

In every particle of the world,

the moon of your love

causes the heart

of each atom to glow.

~ Muhammad Shirin Maghribi  

from Love's Alchemy

Poems from the Sufi Tradition

translations by David and Sabrineh Fideler

a thousand years of joy - the film trailer

what difference

Some time when the river is ice ask me

mistakes I have made. Ask me whether

what I have done is my life. Others

have come in their slow way into

my thought, and some have tried to help

or to hurt: ask me what difference

their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.

You and I can turn and look

at the silent river and wait. We know

the current is there, hidden; and there

are comings and goings from miles away

that hold the stillness exactly before us.

What the river says, that is what I say.

~ William Stafford
from Ask Me

what is happening

Instant to instant

we ask, what is happening?

The sound of shattering everywhere,

is it the world, fragmenting at last,

or our own hearts cracking,

the final break-up of ice?

~ Dorothy Walters

from Marrow of Flame

how much

~  Beth Cioffoletti
 louie louie blog

this moment this love

This moment this love comes to rest in me,

many beings in one being.

In one wheat grain a thousand sheaf stacks.

Inside the needle's eye, a turning night of stars.

Listen, if you can stand to.

Union with the friend

means not being who you have been,

being instead silence, a place,

a view where language is inside seeing.

From the wet source

someone cuts a reed to make a flute

The reed sips breath like wine,

sips more, practicing. Now drunk,

it starts the high clear notes.

There is a path from me to you

that I am constantly looking for,

so I try to keep clear and still

as water does with the moon.

We do not have to follow the pressure-flow of wanting.

We can be led by the guide.

Wishes may or may not come true

in this house of disappointment.

Let's push the door open together and leave.

My essence is like the essence of a red wine.

My body is a cup that grieves because it is inside time.

Glass after glass of wine go into my head.

Finally, my head goes into the wine.

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks

from The Big Red Book

A clear midnight

This is thy hour O soul, thy free flight into the wordless,

Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,

Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best,

Night, sleep, death and the stars.

~ Walt Whitman