Monday, April 16, 2018

see yourself in the cruelest







Practice until you see yourself in the cruelest person on Earth,
 in the child starving, in the political prisoner. 
Continue until you recognize yourself in everyone in the supermarket,
 on the street corner, in a concentration camp, on a leaf, in a dewdrop. 
Meditate until you see yourself in a speck of dust in a distant galaxy. 
See and listen with the whole of your being. If you are fully present, 
the rain of Dharma will water the deepest seeds in your consciousness, 
and tomorrow, while you are washing the dishes or looking at the blue sky, 
that seed will spring forth, and love and understanding
 will appear as a beautiful flower.


~  Thich Nhat Hanh
with thanks to louie, louie 


Saturday, April 14, 2018

vanishing





We are vanishing from the earth, yet I cannot think we are useless
or else Usen would not have created us. He created all tribes of 
men and certainly had a righteous purpose in creating each.


~ Geronimo

 

Sunday, April 8, 2018

vocation to solitude









 To deliver oneself up, to hand oneself over, entrust oneself completely to the silence of a wide landscape of woods and hills, or sea, or desert; to sit still while the sun comes up over that land and fills its silences with light. To pray and work in the morning and to labor and rest in the afternoon, and to sit still again in meditation in the evening when night falls up on that land and when the silence fills itself with darkness and with stars… to belong completely to such silence, to let it soak into the bones, to breathe nothing but silence, to feed on silence, and to turn the very substance of life into a living and vigilant silence.

~ Thomas Merton 
from Thoughts in Solitude
  art by Odilon Redon, " Silence"
with thanks to Parabola

 

the finger pointing?






“What is essential is invisible to the eye" 
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry



The various languages placed side by side show that with words it is never a question of truth, never a question of adequate expression; otherwise, there would not be so many languages. The “thing in itself” (which is precisely what the pure truth, apart from any of its consequences, would be) is likewise something quite incomprehensible to the creator of language and something not in the least worth striving for. This creator only designates the relations of things to men, and for expressing these relations he lays hold of the boldest metaphors… It is this way with all of us concerning language; we believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things — metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities… A word becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar cases — which means, purely and simply, cases which are never equal and thus altogether unequal. Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things. Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept “leaf” is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects. This awakens the idea that, in addition to the leaves, there exists in nature the “leaf”: the original model according to which all the leaves were perhaps woven, sketched, measured, colored, curled, and painted — but by incompetent hands, so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct, trustworthy, and faithful likeness of the original model… We obtain the concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us.




~ Friedrich Nietzsche
from  Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche
art from  original watercolors for The Little Prince
 

Wednesday, April 4, 2018

For Martin Luther King






On hearing if Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination Thomas Merton wrote this poem:
April 4 1968 


On a rainy night
On a rainy night in April
When everybody ---
Said the minister

On a balcony
Of a hotel in Tennessee
"We come at once
Upstairs

On a night
On a rainy night in April
When the shot was fired
Said the minister

"I've come at once upstairs
and found him lying
On the balcony ... after... the tornado...he came at once upstairs

On a --- ---
he was our hope
and we found a tornado
said the minister.

And a well dreamed white ---
said the minister
Propped a telescopic storm

and he never
(the well-deemed minister of death)
ran
ran away

And on the balcony
Said the minister
found
even lovely dying.... after... the tornado
... after the tornado
... after... the tornado
... after... the tornado



~ Thomas Merton
with thanks to louie,louie


Merton's letter to Coretta Scott King

 

Friday, March 30, 2018

in my end is my beginning







In the Beginning of Beginnings was Void of Void, the
Nameless.
And in the Nameless was the One, without body, without
form.
This One - this Being in whom all find power to exist -
Is the Living.
From the Living, comes the Formless, the Undivided.
From the act of this Formless, come the Existents, each
according
To its inner principle.  This is Form. Here body embraces and
cherishes spirit.
The two work together as one, blending and manifesting their
Characters.  And this is Nature.
But he who obeys Nature returns through Form and Formless
to the Living,
And in the Living
Joins the unbegun Beginning.
The joining is Sameness.  The sameness is Void.  The Void is
infinite.
The bird opens its beak and sings its note
And then the beak comes together again in Silence.
So Nature and the Living meet together in Void.
Like the closing of the bird's beak
After its song.
Heaven and earth come together in the Unbegun,
And all is foolishness, all is unknown, all is like
The lights of an idiot, all is without mind!
To obey is to close the beak and fall into Unbeginning.



~ Chuang Tzu
translation by Thomas Merton
from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton
art by picasso




into the unknown






There is a certain innocence about beginning, 
with its excitement and promise of something new.
 But this will emerge only through undertaking some voyage into the unknown. 
And no one can foretell what the unknown might yield. 
There are journeys we have begun that have brought us great inner riches and refinement; 
but we had to travel through dark valleys of difficulty and suffering.
 Had we known at the beginning what the journey would demand of us,
 we might never have set out. 
Yet the rewards and gifts became vital to who we are. 
Through the innocence of beginning we are often seduced into growth.

… When the heart is ready for a fresh beginning, 
unforeseen things can emerge. And in a sense, 
this is exactly what a beginning does. 
 
It is an opening for surprises.
 Surrounding the intention and the act of beginning,
 there are always exciting possibilities. … 
beginnings have their own mind, 
and they invite and unveil new gifts and arrivals in one’s life.
 
Beginnings are new horizons that want to be seen; … 
What is the new horizon in you that wants to be seen?





~ John O’Donohue
from To Bless the Space Between Us




Monday, March 26, 2018

give up all questions except one






.

Give up all questions except one: 
'Who am I?' 
After all, the only fact you are sure of is that you are. 
The 'I am' is certain. 
The 'I am this' is not. 
Struggle to find out what you are in reality. 

To know what you are, you must first investigate and know what you are not. 
Discover all that you are not--
body, 
feelings, 
thoughts, 
time, space, 
this or that
--nothing, 
concrete or abstract, 
which you perceive can be you. 

The very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive. 
The clearer you understand that on the level of mind you can be described in negative terms only, 
the quicker will you come to the end of your search and realize that you are the limitless being.




~ Nisargadatta Maharaj


ode to the past








Today, in conversation,
the past
cropped up,
my past.
Sleazy
incidents
indulged,
vacuous
episodes,
spoiled flour,
dust.
You crouch down,
gently
sink
into yourself,
you smile,
congratulate yourself,
but
when it's a matter
of someone else, some friend,
some enemy,
then
you are merciless,
you frown:
What a terrible life he had!
That woman, what a life
she led!
You hold
your nose,
visibly
you disapprove of pasts
other than your own.
Looking back, we view
our worst days
with nostalgia,
cautiously
we open the coffer
and run up the ensign
of our feats
to be admired.
Let's forget the rest.
Just a bad memory.
Listen and learn.
Time
is divided into two rivers:
one
flows backward, devouring
life already lived;
the other
moves forward with you
exposing
your life.
For a single second
they may be joined.
Now.
This is that moment,
the drop of an instant
that washes away the past.
It is the present.
It is in your hands.
Racing, slipping,
tumbling like a waterfall.
But it is yours.
Help it grow
with love, with firmness,
with stone and flight,
with resounding
rectitude,
with purest grains,
the most brilliant metal
from your heart,
walking
in the full light of day
without fear
of truth, goodness, justice,
companions of song,
time that flows
will have the shape
and sound
of a guitar,
and when you want
to bow to the past,
the singing spring of
transparent time
will reveal your wholeness.
Time is joy.
 


~ Pablo Neruda
 from Selected Odes of Pablo Neruda
 with thanks to Love is a Place


Monday, March 19, 2018

freedom







Freedom is not following a river.
Freedom is following a river
...though, if you want to. 

It is deciding now by what happens now.
It is knowing that luck makes a difference.
No leader is free; no follower is free
 ...the rest of us can often be free.
Most of the world are living by
creeds too odd, chancy, and habit-forming
...to be worth arguing about by reason. 

If you are oppressed, wake up about
four in the morning: most places,
you can usually be free some of the time
..if you wake up before other people.


~ William Stafford
 from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems

Tuesday, March 6, 2018

one body








My right hand has written all the poems that I have composed. 
My left hand has not written a single poem. 
But my right hand does not think, “Left Hand, you are good for nothing.” 
My right hand does not have a superiority complex. 
That is why it is very happy. 
My left hand does not have any complex at all. 
In my two hands there is the kind of wisdom 
called the wisdom of nondiscrimination.
One day I was hammering a nail and my right hand was not very accurate 
and instead of pounding on the nail it pounded on my finger.
 It put the hammer down and took care of the left hand 
in a very tender way, as if it were taking care of itself. 
It did not say, “Left Hand, you have to remember that
 I have taken good care of you and you have to pay me back in the future.” 
There was no such thinking. And my left hand did not say, 
“Right Hand, you have done me a lot of harm—
give me that hammer, I want justice.” 
My two hands know that they are members of one body; 
they are in each other.
 
 
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
from his address to Congress entitled
Leading with Courage and Compassion,
Sept. 10th 2003
with thanks to Love is a Place
 
 
 
 

Saturday, March 3, 2018

the way it is








There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
 
 
 
~ William Stafford 


the smile






Galen, the great physician, asked one of his assistants
to give him a certain medicine.

"Master, that medicine is for crazy people!
You're far from needing that!"

Galen: "Yesterday a madman turned and smiled at me,
did his eyebrows up and down, and touched my  sleeve.
He wouldn't have done that if he hadn't recognized 
in me someone congenial."

Anyone that feels drawn,
for however short a time, to anyone else,
those two share a common consciousness.

It's only in the grave that unlike beings associate.
A wise man once remarked, "I saw a crow and a stork
flying together, and I couldn't understand it,
until I investigated and found what they shared.
They were both lame."



~ Rumi
from Rumi's Little Book of Love and Laughter
version bu Coleman Barks
photo by Sean Thomas


Tuesday, February 27, 2018

what we can learn from water







~ Raymond Tang

Monday, February 19, 2018

bring the jewel back






The purpose of the journey is compassion.

When you have come past the pairs of opposites, you have reached compassion. 
The goal is to bring the jewel back to the world, 
to join the two things together.
The separateness apparent in the world is secondary.

Beyond that world of opposites is an unseen,
 but experienced, unity and identity in us all. 



~ Joseph Campbell
from The Hero’s Journey (On Living in the World)