Tuesday, August 7, 2018

the sound of the rain needs no translation









I had a discussion with a great master in Japan, and we were talking about the various people who are working to translate the Zen books into English, and he said, "That's a waste of time. If you really understand Zen, you can use any book. You could use the Bible. You could use Alice in Wonderland. You could use the dictionary, because the sound of the rain needs no translation.



~ Alan Watts










meditation on how





there's no 
figuring out how 
to live life 

there is only 
the living of life 

those who 
figure out how 
end up learning 
to forget all hows 
in order to live again

.
~ Benjamin Dean
from Short Zen Poems, Koans


Saturday, August 4, 2018

dispair and humility








Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love ... It is reached when a man deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost. In every man there is hidden some root of despair because in every man there is pride that vegetates and springs weeds and rank flowers of self-pity as soon as our own resources fail us. . . . But a man who is truly humble cannot despair, because in the humble man there is no longer any such thing as self-pity.

Humility, therefore, is absolutely necessary if man is to avoid acting like a baby all his life. To grow up means, in fact, to become humble, to throw away the illusion that I am at the center of everything and that other people only exist to provide me with comfort and pleasure…





~ Thomas Merton
from Seeds of Contemplation
with thanks to louie, louie
art by van gogh

Sunday, July 22, 2018

our essential nature -








~ Rupert Spira

Friday, July 20, 2018

I see my beauty in you










~ Rumi
version by Coleman Barks

be helpless and completely poor








Being humble is right for you now.
Don't thrash around showing your strength.

You're naked in the bee-house!
It doesn't matter how powerful
your arms and legs are.

To God, that is more of a lie
than your weakness is.

In his doorway your prestige
and your physical energy are just dust
on your face. Be helpless
and completely poor.

And don't try to meet his eye!
That's like signing a paper
that honors yourself.

If you can take care of things, do so!
But when you're living at home with God,
you neither sew the world together
with desires nor tear it apart
with disappointments.

In that place existence itself
is illusion. All that is, is one.



~ Hakim Sanai
English version by Coleman Barks
shoes by Van Gogh
 with thanks to Poetry Chaikhana


the blind old man








I don't know why so much sweetness hovers around us.
Nor why the wind blows the curtains in the afternoons,
Nor why the earth mutters so much about its children.

We'll never know why the snow falls through the night,
Nor how the heron stretches her long legs,
Nor why we feel so abandoned in the morning.

We have never understood how birds manage to fly,
Nor who the genius is who makes up dreams,
Nor how heaven and earth can appear in a poem.

We don't know why the rain falls so long.
The ditchdigger turns up one shovel after another.
The herons go on stitching the heavens together.

We've never heard about the day we were conceived
Nor the doctor who helped us to be born,
Nor that blind old man who decides when we will die.

It's hard to understand why the sun rises,
And why our children are mostly fond of us,
And why the wind blows the curtains in the afternoon.



~  Robert Bly
 from Talking Into the Ear of a Donkey




Saturday, July 14, 2018

on good and evil


.





And one of the elders of the city said, Speak to us of Good and Evil.
And he answered:
Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil.
For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?
Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves, and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters.

You are good when you are one with yourself.
Yet when you are not one with yourself you are not evil.
For a divided house is not a den of thieves; it is only a divided house.
And a ship without rudder may wander aimlessly among perilous isles yet sink not to the bottom.

You are good when you strive to give of yourself.
Yet you are not evil when you seek gain for yourself.
For when you strive for gain you are but a root that clings to the earth and sucks at her breast.
Surely the fruit cannot say to the root, "Be like me, ripe and full and ever giving of your abundance."
For the fruit giving is a need, as receiving is a need to the root.

You are good when you are fully awake in your speech,
Yet you are not evil when you sleep while your tongue staggers without purpose.
And even stumbling speech may strengthen a weak tongue.

You are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps.
Yet you are not evil when you go thither limping.
Even those who limp go not backward.
But you who are strong and swift, see that you do not limp before the lame, deeming it kindness.

You are good in countless ways, and you are not evil when you are not good,
You are only loitering and sluggard.
Pity that the stags cannot teach swiftness to the turtles.

In your longing for your giant self lies your goodness: and that longing is in all of you.
But in some of you that longing is a torrent rushing with might to the sea, carrying the secrets of the hillsides and the songs of the forest.
And in others it is a flat stream that loses itself in angles and bends and lingers before it reaches the shore.
But let not him who longs much say to him who longs little, "Wherefore are you slow and halting?"
For the truly good ask not the naked, "Where is your garment?" nor the houseless, "What has befallen your house?"



~ Kahlil Gibran
(excerpt from: The Prophet )
.

Thursday, July 12, 2018

beauty and ugliness






When people see things as beautiful,
ugliness is created.
When people see things as good,
evil is created.

Being and non-being produce each other.
Difficult and easy complement each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low oppose each other.
Fore and aft follow each other.

Therefore the Master
can act without doing anything
and teach without saying a word.
Things come her way and she does not stop them;
things leave and she lets them go.
She has without possessing,
and acts without any expectations.
When her work is done, she takes no credit.
That is why it will last forever.





~ Lao Tzu
from the Tao Te Ching
translation by j.h.mcdonald




Monday, July 9, 2018

what draws you?







There are two types on the path, those
who come against their will, the blindly religious,
and those who obey out of love.

The former have ulterior motives.
they want the midwife near because she gives them milk.
The others love the beauty of the nurse.

The former memorize the prooftexts of conformity
and repeat them. The latter disappear
into whatever draws them to God.

Both are drawn from the source.
Any motion is from the mover.
Any love from the beloved.



~ Rumi
from Rumi - The Book of Love
translations by Coleman Barks


 

sacrificed





Not until a person dissolves, can
he or she know what union is

There is a descent into emptiness.
A lie will not change to truth

with just talking about it.

***

Longing is the core of mystery
Longing itself brings the cure.
The only rule is, Suffer the pain.

Your desire must be disciplined,
and what you want to happen
in time, sacrificed.



~ Rumi
from The Soul of Rumi
translations by Coleman Barks



Saturday, July 7, 2018

forget







Forget the suffering
You caused others.
Forget the suffering
Others caused you.

The waters run and run,
Springs sparkle and are done,
You walk the earth you are forgetting.

Sometimes you hear a distant refrain.
What does it mean, you ask, who is singing?
A childlike sun grows warm.
A grandson and a great-grandson are born.
You are led by the hand once again.

The names of the rivers remain with you.
How endless those rivers seem!
Your fields lie fallow,
The city towers are not as they were.
You stand at the threshold mute. 


By Czeslaw Milosz
version by Robert Hass

Friday, June 8, 2018

compassion and kinship








~ Fr. Gregory Boyle


Wednesday, June 6, 2018

when you're broken open






Dance, when you're broken open.
Dance, if you've torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you're perfectly free.

I have lived on the lip
of insanity, wanting to know reasons,
knocking on a door.  It opens.
I've been knocking from the inside!

Something opens our wings.  Something
makes boredom and hurt disappear.
Someone fills the cup in front of us.
We taste only sacredness.

No better love than love with no object,
no more satisfying work than work with no purpose.
If you could give up tricks and cleverness,
that would be the cleverest trick!

Some nights stay up till dawn,
as the moon sometimes does for the sun.
Be a full bucket pulled up the dark way
of a well, then lifted out into light.





~ Rumi
.

St. Francis and the sow







.

The bud
stands for all things,
even those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as St. Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of
the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking
and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.





~ Galway Kinnell