Saturday, May 6, 2017

the entry







Not from saying names, 
or praying to statuary.

Not from holding your breath
till you are blue in the face.

Not from twisting your torso this way, now that,
till you are like a string
striving to become a knot.

Not from reading saints' lives
or fingering a billion beads.

Only this:

The moment between the breaths.
The stillness between the notes.

A firefly extinguishes itself,
bleeds darkness
before its final flare.



 ~ Dorothy Walters
from Marrow of Flame 
(homage to Kabir)

 
 

Thursday, May 4, 2017

child of heaven and earth







As a child of heaven and earth, 
you are a mix of infinite openness and finite limitation.  
This means that you are both wonderful and difficult
 at the same time.  
You are flawed, you are stuck in old patterns, 
you become carried away with yourself.  
Indeed, you are quite impossible in many ways.  

And still, you are beautiful beyond measure. 
 For the core of what you are is fashioned out of love,
 that potent blend of openness, warmth, 
and clear transparent presence. 
 Boundless love always seems to sparkle 
through your limited form.



~ John Welwood
from Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships: Healing the Wound of the Heart




Monday, May 1, 2017

the broken thread









Once upon a time, there was a Sufi mystic. Like many mystics, he did not hold any formal position or title. He lived completely in the world, and the only way you knew anything was special about him was the sense of sweetness that seemed to cling to everything he touched.
During the day, he functioned as a shopkeeper, carefully sweeping and stacking and dusting the majestic tapestries, which he sold to support his family. There was a gentle buzz about the shop, a calm flow of traffic that never seemed to cease, from early in the morning when the shopkeeper’s wife unlocked the door and switched the sign to read open, until the evening hours, when the last rays of the sun settled across the dusty streets.

Gradually, the people who came to visit the shop began to linger, to breathe in the fragrance of the mystic, and upon their request, he began to teach. One of his students asked one day if he could begin to spend the afternoons as his assistant. He had no need of pay; he wanted to learn, and the mystic simply smiled, and so it began.

The boy was very polite, and so when he saw his master doing a very peculiar thing one afternoon after a new shipment arrived, he stared only for a moment and did not ask a question. Two days later, when he saw his master doing the same very odd thing, again he politely turned his eyes aside. And so again the third and the fourth and the fifth time. But finally, his curiosity could be contained no more.“Master,” he said, addressing his teacher.
The mystic turned and gazed with soft, deep eyes.
“Master. Why is it that every time you get a shipment of new tapestries, you grab a pin and loosen a thread in the center of each? I’ve seen you do this five times. I know how you love the tapestries, how you teach to always care for what we have here on earth.” He turned his palms up. “Why?”
The Mystic’s soft eyes did not change their expression. “That is the secret,” he said.
The boy’s face grew red and flushed. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”
His teacher continued. “The secret of the love. In the broken thread, the place of the flaw, is where you find your way to God.” 


 ~ Sufi story
art from  the Dome of a Sufi Saint by majhul


Friday, April 28, 2017

we phantom figures





46

For in and out, above, about, below,
'Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show,
Play'd in a Box whose Candle is the Sun,
Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.

47

And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press,
End in the Nothing all Things end in - Yes -
Then fancy while Thou art, Thou art but what
Thou shalt be - Nothing - Thou shalt not be less.

49

'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days
Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
Hither and Thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.

51

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

52

And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop't we live and die,
Lift not thy hands to It for help - for It
Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.

2

Dreaming when Dawn's Left Hand was in the Sky
I heard a Voice within the Tavern cry,
"Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup
Before Life's Liquor in its Cup be dry."

7

Come , fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
 The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly - and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.

20

Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears
To-day of past Regrets and future Fears -
To-morrow? - Why, To-morrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n Thousand Years.

32

There was a Door to which I found no Key:
There was a Veil past which I could not see:
Some little Talk awhile of Me and Thee
There seemed - and then no more of Thee and Me.

55

The Vine had struck a Fibre; which about
If clings my Being - let the Sufi flout;
Of my Base Metal may be filed a Key,
That shall unlock the Door he howls without

56

And this I know: whether the one True Light,
Kindle to Love, or Wrathconsume me quite,
One Glimpse of It within the Tavern caught
Better than in the Temple lost outright.




~ Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
First Edition, 1859
translation into English quatrains by Edward FitzGerald 

Wednesday, April 19, 2017

people like us







There are more like us. All over the world
There are confused people, who can't remember
The name of their dog when they wake up, and people
Who love God but can't remember where

He was when they went to sleep. It's
All right. The world cleanses itself this way.
A wrong number occurs to you in the middle
Of the night, you dial it, it rings just in time

To save the house. And the second-story man
Gets the wrong address, where the insomniac lives,
And he's lonely, and they talk, and the thief
Goes back to college. Even in graduate school,

You can wander into the wrong classroom,
And hear great poems lovingly spoken 
By the wrong professor. And you find your soul,
And greatness has a defender, and even in death you're safe.




~ Robert Bly
from Morning Poems



.

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Our hearts irrigate this earth





.


How is it they live for eons in such harmony -
the billions of stars -

when most men can barely go a minute
without declaring war in their mind against someone they know.

There are wars where no one marches with a flag,
though that does not keep casualties
from mounting.

Our hearts irrigate this earth.
We are fields before
each other.

How can we live in harmony?
First we need to
know

we are all madly in love
with the same
God.



~ St. Thomas Aquinas
(Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West 
by Daniel Ladinsky)


a somebody?








About a decade after he made his oft-quoted proclamation in Leaves of Grass — 
“Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, 
/ (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
 
 — Whitman considers the cohesion of those multitudes:


There is, in sanest hours, a consciousness, a thought that rises, 
independent, lifted out from all else, calm, like the stars, shining eternal.
 
This is the thought of identity — yours for you, whoever you are, 
as mine for me. Miracle of miracles, beyond statement, most spiritual
 and vaguest of earth’s dreams, yet hardest basic fact,
 and only entrance to all facts. 
 
In such devout hours,
 in the midst of the significant wonders of heaven and earth, 
(significant only because of the Me in the centre,)
 creeds, conventions, fall away and become of no account 
before this simple idea. Under the luminousness of real vision,
 it alone takes possession, takes value. Like the shadowy dwarf in the fable,
 once liberated and look’d upon, it expands over the whole earth,
 and spreads to the roof of heaven.




~ Walt Whitman
 from the essay Democratic Vistas
Illustration by Mimmo Paladino for a rare edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses
with thanks to Brain Pickings



Sunday, April 2, 2017

looking for the face








~ Robert Lax
with thanks to louie, louie

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

a small green island






There is a small green island
where one white cow lives alone,
a meadow of an island.
 
The cow grazes till nightfall, full and fat,
but during the night she panics
and grows thin as a single hair.  "What shall I eat
tomorrow?  There's nothing left!"
 
By dawn, the grass has grown up again, waist-high.
The cow starts eating and by dark
the meadow is clipped short.
 
She's full of strength and energy, but she panics
in the dark as before, and grows 
abnormally thin overnight.
 
The cow does this over and over,
and this is all she does.
 
She never thinks, "This meadow has never failed
to grow back.  Why should I be afraid
every night that it won't?"
 
The cow is the bodily soul.
The island field is this world where
that grows lean with fear and fat with blessing,
 
lean and fat.  White cow,
don't make yourself miserable
with what's to come, or not to come.
 
 
 
~ Rumi
translation by Coleman Barks
 
 
 

Saturday, March 25, 2017

nothing?






Once upon a time there was a man who had about twelve cows, and he loved his cows.  Every morning and evening he would praise them for the amount of  milk they were giving and praise them for their beauty.  One morning he noticed that the amount of milk had lessened.  Each day for a week he noticed the same thing.  So that night he decided to stay up and see what was going on.

About midnight, he happened to look up at the stars, and he saw one star that seemed to be getting larger.  It was - and the light got stronger as the star came closer and closer to earth.  It came straight down towards his cow pasture and stopped a few feet from him in the form of a great ball of light.  Inside the light there was a luminous woman.  As soon as her toes touched the ground, the light disappeared, and she stood there like an ordinary woman.

He said to her, "Are you the one who has been stealing milk from my cows?" "Yes," she said, "my sisters and I like the milk from your cows very much."  He said, "You are very beautiful, and I'm glad that you like my cows.  And so, this is what I want to say: If you marry me, we can live together, and I will never hit you and you won't have to take care of the cows all the time.  I'll take care of them part of the time myself.  Will you marry me?"  She said slowly, "Yes, I will.  But there's one condition.  I have brought this basket with me, and I want you to agree that you will never look into this basket.  You must never look into it, no matter how long we are married.  Do you agree to that?"  "Oh, I do,"  he said.

So they were married, and they lived together very well for six or seven months.  Then one day, while she was out herding the cows, he happened to notice that basket standing in a corner of the house.  He said to himself,  "Well, you know, she is my wife, so it could be considered to be my basket.  After all, this is my house, and the basket is in my house, and so it could be considered my basket!"  After he had said this, he opened the basket and then began to laugh.  "There's absolutely nothing in the basket!  Nothing! There's nothing in the basket!"  He kept saying these words and laughing so loud that his wife eventually heard the laughter.

She came into the house and she said to him, "Have you opened the basket?"  He began laughing again.  "I did!"  he said.  "I opened the basket!  There's nothing in it! There's nothing in the basket at all!  There's absolutely nothing in the basket! Nothing is in the basket!"

She said,"I have to leave now.  I have to go back."  He cried out. "Don't go!  Don't leave me!"  She said, "I have to go back now.  What I brought with me in the basket was spirit.  It's so like human beings to think that spirit is nothing."

And she was gone.




~  An African Story
from The Soul is Here for It's Own Joy - Sacred Poems from Many Cultures
edited by Robert Bly
african rock art from Chad



 

Saturday, March 18, 2017

birds of passage







The
Classroom
Surely becomes disarrayed
When the teacher is out of sight
Because of our grand
Volcanic 
Spirits.

The 
Birds of passage
Arrive with a broken 
Wing,

Though
Are then lifted by God
So high and
"Low"

To experience the heart
Of everything.

The mind surely becomes disarrayed
When the Teacher is out
Of sight.



~ Hafiz
from The Gift
translations by Daniel Ladinisky

 

Friday, March 17, 2017

and love says






And love
Says,

"I will, I will take care of you,"

To everything that is
Near.


~ Hafiz
from The Gift
translation by Daniel Ladinsky

Saturday, March 4, 2017

chickpea to cook





A chickpea leaps almost over the rim of the pot
where it's being boiled.

"Why are you doing this to me?"

The cook knocks him down with the ladle.

"Don't you try to jump out.
You think I'm torturing you.
I'm giving you flavor,
so you can mix with spices and rice
and be the lovely vitality of a human being.

Remember when you drank rain in the garden.
That was for this."

Grace first. Sexual pleasure,
then a boiling new life begins,
and the Friend has something good to eat.

Eventually the chickpea 
will say to the cook,
 "Boil me some more.
Hit me with the skimming spoon.
I can't do this be myself.

I'm like an elephant that dreams of gardens
back in Hindustan and doesn't pay attention
to his driver.  You're my cook, my driver,
my way into existence. I love cooking."

The cook says, "I was once like you,
fresh from the ground,  Then I boiled in time,
and boiled in the body, two fierce boilings.

My animal soul grew powerful.
I controlled it with practices,
and boiled some more, and boiled once beyond that,
and become your teacher."




~ Rumi
from The essential Rumi
translations by Coleman Barks and John Moyne



Macarius and the pony


.


.
People in a village
At the desert's edge
Had a daughter
Who was changed (they thought)
By magic arts
Into a pony.

At first they berated her
"Why do you have to be a horse?"
She could think of no reply.

So they led her out with a halter 
Into the hot waste land
Where there was a saint
Called Macarius
Living in a cell.

"Father" they said
"This young mare here
Is, or was, our daughter.
Enemies, wicked men,
Magicians, have made her
The animal you see.
Now by your prayers to God
Change her back
Into the girl she used to be."

"My prayers" said Macarius,
"Will change nothing,
For I see no mare.
Why do you call this good child
An animal?"

But he led her into his cell
With her parents:
There he spoke to God 
Anointing the girl with oil;
And when they saw with what love 
He placed his hand upon her head
They realized, at once.
She was no animal.
She had never changed.
She had been a girl from the beginning.

"Your own eyes
(said Macarius)
Are your enemies.
Your own crooked thoughts
(said the anchorite)
Change people around you
Into birds and animals.
Your own ill-will
(said the clear-eyed one)
Peoples the world with specters."


.
~ Thomas Merton
from  The Collected Poems


.

Friday, February 24, 2017

sweater






What is asked of one is not what is asked of another.
A sweater takes on the shape of its wearer,
a coffee cup sits to the left or the right of the workspace,
making its pale Saturn rings of now and before.
Lucky the one who rises to sit at a table,
day after day spilling coffee sweet with sugar, whitened with milk.
Lucky the one who writes in a book of spiral-bound mornings
a future in ink, who writes hand unshaking, warmed by thick wool.
Lucky still, the one who writes later, shaking.  Acrobatic at last, the 
sweater,
elastic as breath that enters what shape it is asked to. 
Patient the table;  unjudging, the ample, refillable cup.
Irrefusable, the shape the sweater is given,
stretched in the shoulders, sleeves lengthened by unmetaphysical
pullings on.





~ Jane Hirshfield
from Come, Thief