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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

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

what we can learn from water

~ Raymond Tang

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)

Christianity and Unknowing

~ Richard Rohr

the dark night

In the delicious night,

In privacy, where no one saw me,

Nor did I see one thing,

I had no light or guide

But the fire that burned inside my chest.

That fire showed me

The way more clearly than the blaze of noon

To where, waiting for me,

Was the One I knew so well,

In that place where no one ever is.

Oh night, sweet guider,

Oh night more marvelous than dawn!

Oh night which joins

The lover and the beloved

So that the lover and beloved change bodies!

In my chest full of flowers,

Flowering wholly and only for Him,

There He remained sleeping;

I cared for Him there,

And the fan of the high cedars cooled Him.

The wind played with

His hair, and that wind from the high

Towers struck me on the neck

With its sober hand;

Sight, taste, touch, hearing stopped.

I stood still, I forgot who I was,

My face leaning against Him,

Everything stopped, abandoned me,

My worldliness was gone, forgotten

Among the white lilies.

~ St. John of the Cross

from The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross 

version by Robert Bly

photo by imogene cunningham

wei wu wei: "action without action" or "effortless doing"

The deep secrecy of my own being is often hidden from me by my own estimate of what I am. My idea of what I am is falsified by my admiration for what I do. And my illusions about myself are bred by contagion from the illusions of other men. We all seek to imitate one another's imagined greatness.
If I do not know who I am, it is because I think I am the sort of person everyone around me wants to be. Perhaps I have never asked myself whether I really wanted to become what everybody else seems to want to become. Perhaps if I only realized that I do not admire what everyone seems to admire, I would really begin to live after all. I would be liberated from the painful duty of saying what I really do not think.

~ Thomas Merton
with thanks to whiskey river

a vast similitude

On the beach at night alone,

As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,

As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes 

and of the future.

A vast similitude interlocks all,

All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,

All distances of place however wide,

All distances of time, all inanimate forms,

All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds,

All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,

All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,

All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe,

All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,

.

This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann’d,

And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.

~ Walt Whitman

photo by chertkova svetlana

recommended

A refreshing vision our intimate connection with each other

and life itself.

~  by Gregory Boyle 

 

the art of dying - training for nonviolence

Just as one must learn the art of killing in the training for violence, 

so one must learn the art of dying in the training for nonviolence. 

Violence does not mean emancipation from fear, 

but discovering the means of combating the cause for fear. 

The votary of nonviolence has to cultivate the capacity for sacrifice 

of the highest type in order to be free from fear. 

He reckons not if he should lose his land, his wealth, his life. 

Whoever has not overcome all fear cannot practice nonviolence to perfection. 

~ Mohandas K. Gandhi

art by picasso

the chance of humming

A

man

standing on two logs in a river

might do all right floating with the current

while humming in the

now.

Though

if one log is tied to a camel,

who is also heading south along the bank - at the same pace -

all could still be well

with the 

world

unless the camel

thinks he forgot something, and

abruptly turns upstream,

then

uh-oh.

Most minds

do not live in the present

and can stick to a reasonable plan; most minds abruptly turn

and undermine the

chance

of

humming.

~ Rumi

translation by Daniel Ladinsky

from Love Poems from God

watercolor by Kim Novak

Love

...

Love is the strongest force the world possesses,
and yet it is the humblest imaginable

...

~ Mahatma Gandhi

mansion

So it came time
for me to cede myself
and I chose
the wind
to be delivered to

The wind was glad
and said it needed all
the body
it could get
to show its motions with

and wanted to know
willingly as I hoped it would
if it could do
something in return
to show its gratitude

When the tree of my bones
rises from the skin I said
come and whirlwinding
stroll my dust
around the plain

so I can see
how the ocotillo does
and how saguaro-wren is
and when you fall
with evening

fall with me here
where we can watch
the closing up of day
and think how morning breaks

~ A. R. Ammons

art by Jill Kuhn

 with thanks to Death Deconstructed

when we pray alone

We are brought thick desserts, and we rarely refuse them
We worship devoutly when we’re with others.
Hours we sit, though we get up quickly
after a few minutes, when we pray alone.
We hurry down the gullet of our wantings.

But these qualities can change,
as minerals in the ground rise inside trees
and become tree, as a plant faces an animal
and enters the animal, so a human
can put down the heavy
body baggage and
be light. 

~Rumi

 version by Coleman Barks

from The Essential Rumi

 

Ripeness

Ripeness is

what falls away with ease.

Not only the heavy apple,

the pear,

but also the dried brown strands

of autumn iris from their core.

To let your body

love this world

that gave itself to your care

in all of its ripeness,

with ease,

and will take itself from you

in equal ripeness and ease,

is also harvest.

And however sharply

you are tested --

this sorrow, that great love --

it too will leave on that clean knife.

~ Jane Hirshfield

(The October Palace)

my name

I guess you are kind of curious as to who I am, but I am one of those who do not have a regular name. My name depends on you. Just call me whatever is in your mind.
If you are thinking about something that happened a long time ago: Somebody asked you a question and you did not know the answer.
That is my name.
Perhaps it was raining very hard.
That is my name.
Or somebody wanted you to do something. You did it. Then they told you what you did was wrong—“Sorry for the mistake,”—and you had to do something else.
That is my name.
Perhaps it was a game you played when you were a child or something that came idly into your mind when you were old and sitting in a chair near the window.
That is my name.
Or you walked someplace. There were flowers all around.
That is my name.
Perhaps you stared into a river. There as something near you who loved you. They were about to touch you. You could feel this before it happened. Then it happened.
That is my name.

~ Richard Brautigan

from In Watermelon Sugar
with thanks to love is a place

 

against certainty

.

.

There is something out in the dark that wants to correct us. 

Each time I think "this," it answers "that." 

Answers hard, in the heart-grammar's strictness. 

If I then say "that," it too is taken away. 

Between certainty and the real, an ancient enmity. 

When the cat waits in the path-hedge, 

no cell of her body is not waiting. 

This is how she is able to so completely to disappear. 

I would like to enter the silence portion as she does. 

To live amid the great vanishing as a cat must live, 

one shadow fully at ease inside another.

~ Jane Hirshfield
from After

identity

In the phrase [“to find myself”] lurks the idea that the self is a pre-existing entity, a self like a Platonic idea existing in a mystic realm beyond time and change. No, rather an object like a nugget of gold in the placer pan, the Easter egg under the bush at an Easter-egg hunt, a four-leaf clover to promise miraculous luck. Here is the essence of passivity, one’s quintessential luck. And the essence of absurdity, too, for the self is never to be found, but must be created, not the happy accident of passivity, but the product of a thousand actions, large and small, conscious or unconscious, performed not “away from it all,” but in the face of “it all,” for better or for worse, in work and leisure rather than in free time.

~ Robert Penn Warren

from his Jefferson Lecture about power, tenderness, and art’s role in a healthy society

with thanks to brainpickings