Wednesday, August 29, 2018

her longing









Before this longing,
I lived serene as a fish
At one with the plants in the pond,
The mare's tail, the floating frogbite,
Among my eight-legged friends,
Open like a pool, a lesser parsnip,
Like a leech, looping myself along,
A bug-eyed edible one,
A mouth like a stickleback,-
A thing quiescent!

But now-
The wild stream, the sea itself cannot contain me:
I dive with the black hag, the cormorant,
Or walk the pebbly shore with the humpbacked heron,
Shaking out my catch in the morning sunlight,
Or rise with the gar-eagle, the great-winged condor,
Floating over the mountains,
Pitting my breast against the rushing air,
A phoenix, sure of my body,
Perpetually rising out of myself,
My wings hovering over the shorebirds,
Or beating against the black clouds of the storm,
Protecting the sea-cliffs.





~ Theodore Roethke
from News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness
edited by Robert Bly
 
 

Tuesday, August 28, 2018

when the lamp went out






When they plow their fields
and sow seeds in the earth,
when they care for their wives and children, 
young brahmans find riches.

But I've done everything right
and followed the rule of my teacher.
I'm not lazy or proud.
Why haven't I found peace?

Bathing my feet 
I watched the bathwater
spill down the slope.
I concentrated my mind
the way you train a good horse.

The I took the lamp
and went into my cell,
checked the bed,
and sat down on it.
I took a needle
and pushed the wick down.

When the lamp went out
my mind was freed.


~ Patacara, (6th B.C.E.)
from Women in Praise of the Sacred
edited by Jane Hirshfield

.

understanding fails






If one reaches the point where understanding fails, this is not a tragedy: it is simply a reminder to stop thinking and start looking.  Perhaps there is nothing to figure out after all: perhaps we only need to wake up.

A monk said: "I have been with you (Master), for a long time, and yet I am unable to understand your way.  How is this?"

The Master said: "Where you do not understand, there is the point for your understanding."

In the first two chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul distinguishes between two kinds of wisdom: one which consists in the knowledge of words and statements, a rational, dialectical wisdom, and another which is at once a matter of paradox and of experience, and goes beyond the reach of reason.  To attain to this spiritual wisdom, one must first be liberated from servile dependence on the "wisdom, of speech."

St. Paul compares this knowledge of God, in the Spirit, to the subjective knowledge that a man has of himself.  Just as no one can know my inner self except my own "spirit," so no one can know God except God's Spirit; yet this Holy Spirit is given to us, in such a way that God know Himself in us, and this experience is utterly real, though it cannot be communicated in terms understandable to those who do not share it.  Consequently, St. Paul concludes, "we have the mind of Christ."




~ Thomas Merton
excerpts from Zen and the Birds of Appetite
art by Van Gogh
.

Monday, August 27, 2018

an older unity







And the deepest level of communication 
is not communication, 
but communion. It is wordless. 
It is beyond words, 
and it is beyond speech, 
and it is beyond 
concept. 

Not that we discover a new unity. 
We discover an older unity. 
My dear brothers, we are already one. 
But we imagine that we are not. 
And what we have to recover is our original unity. 
What we have to be is what we are.



~ Thomas Merton
from his Asian journal
art by Van Gogh

 

Friday, August 24, 2018

ask the horse







There is a story in Zen circles about a man and a horse. 

The horse is galloping quickly, and it appears that the man on the horse is going somewhere important. Another man, standing alongside the road, shouts, 'Where are you going?" and the first man replies, I don't know! Ask the horse!" This is also our story. We are riding a horse, we don't know where we are going, and we can't stop. The horse is our habit energy pulling us along, and we are powerless. 

We are always running, and it has become a habit. 
We struggle all the time, even during our sleep. 
We are at war within ourselves, and we can easily start a war with others.




~ Thich Nhat Hanh
from "The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching"

habit






The shoes put on each time
left first, then right.

The morning potion’s teaspoon
of sweetness stirred always
for seven circlings—no fewer, no more—
into the cracked blue cup.

Touching the pocket for wallet,
for keys,
before closing the door.

How did we come
to believe these small rituals’ promise,
that we are today the selves we yesterday knew,
tomorrow will be?

How intimate and unthinking,
the way the toothbrush is shaken dry after use,
the part we wash first in the bath.

Which habits we learned from others
and which are ours alone we may never know.
Unbearable to acknowledge
how much they are themselves our fated life.

Open the traveling suitcase—

There the beloved red sweater,
bright tangle of necklace, earrings of amber.
Each confirming: I chose these, I.

But habit is different: it chooses.
And we, its good horse,
opening our mouths at even the sight of the bit.



~ Jane Hirshfield
from Given Sugar, Given Salt

Tuesday, August 21, 2018

waiting for you




.

It's very important to experience the complete negation of yourself
which brings you to the other side of nothing.
You go to the other side of nothing
and you are held by the hand of the absolute.
You see yourself as the absolute
so you have no more insistence of self.
You can speak of the self as no self
when you sit in the absolute.

Your sitting still is like a person who just shot an arrow.
A moment later the result is there.
What you know, the only thing you know
is the sense that the arrow is moving all right.
It has left your realm but you sense it is running well.
The stillness in sitting is like that.
You flip to the other side of nothing,
where you discover everyone is waiting for you already




. ~ Kobun Chino

hymn to time









Time says “Let there be”
every moment and instantly
there is space and the radiance
of each bright galaxy.

And eyes beholding radiance.
And the gnats’ flickering dance.
And the seas’ expanse.
And death, and chance.

Time makes room
for going and coming home
and in time’s womb
begins all ending.

Time is being and being
time, it is all one thing,
the shining, the seeing,
the dark abounding.




~   Ursula K. Le Guin

Friday, August 17, 2018

no such thing









contemplation is not trance or ecstasy
not emotional fire and sweetness that come with religious exaltation
not enthusiasm, not the sense of being "seized" by an elemental force
and swept into liberation by mystical frenzy.
contemplation is no pain-killer.

In the end the contemplative suffers the anguish of realizing
that he no longer knows what God is;
this is a great gain,
because "God is not a what,"
not a "thing."

There is "no such thing" as God
because God is neither a "what" or a "thing"
but a pure "Who,"
the "Thou" before whom our inmost "I" springs
into awareness.






~ Thomas Merton
from New Seed of Contemplation
sketch by the author

Thursday, August 16, 2018

the lesson of the falling leaves






the leaves believe
such letting go is love
such love is faith
such faith is grace
such grace is god.
i agree with the leaves.


~ Lucille Clifton




Tuesday, August 14, 2018

outside ourselves








When we live superficially … we are always outside ourselves, never quite ‘with’ ourselves, always divided and pulled in many directions … we find ourselves doing many things that we do not really want to do, saying things we do not really mean, needing things we do not really need, exhausting ourselves for what we secretly realize to be worthless and without meaning in our lives.



~ Thomas Merton
from Love and Living
art by Picasso
with thanks to louie, louie



Monday, August 13, 2018

the heart's value







On God's pathway
there are two Ka'bas.

One is the Ka'ba you can see;
the other, the Ka'ba of the heart.

As much as you can,
make pilgrimage to the heart -

The heart's value
is greater
than a thousands Ka'bas.



~ Awhad al-Din Kirmani
from Love's Alchemy
translations by David and Sabrineh Fideler
Kneeling "Chinese" Man, 13th-14th centuries. 
Terracotta, Brooklyn Museum





Tuesday, August 7, 2018

it’s the dream





It’s that dream that we carry with us
that something wonderful will happen,
that it has to happen,
that time will open,
that the heart will open,
that doors will open,
that the mountains will open,
that wells will leap up,
that the dream will open,
that one morning we’ll slip in
to a harbor that we've never known.




~ Olav H. Hauge
translated by Robert Bly
art by klimt







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