an ordinary act

Though he was ill and in pain,

in disobedience to the instruction he

would have received if he had asked,

the old man got up from his bed,

dressed, and went to the barn.

The bare branches of winter had emerged

through the last leaf-colors of fall,

the loveliest of all, browns and yellows

delicate and nameless in the gray light

and the sifting rain.  He put feed

in the troughs for eighteen ewe lambs,

sent the dog for them,. and she

brought them.  They came eager

to their feed, and he who felt 

their hunger was by their feeding 

eased.  From no place in the time

of present places, within no boundary

nameable in human thought,

they had gathered once again,

the shepherd, his sheep, and his dog

with all the known and the unknown

round about to the heavens' limit.

Was this his stubbornness or bravado?

No.  Only an ordinary act

of profoundest intimacy in a day

that might have been better.  Still

the world persisted in its beauty,

he in his gratitude, and for this

he had most earnestly prayed.

~ Wendell Berry

from Leavings

Violence

We are trying to understand violence as a fact, not as an idea, as a fact which exists in the human being, and the human being is myself.  And to go into the problem I must be completely vulnerable, open, to it.  I must expose myself to myself - not necessarily expose myself to you because you may not be interested - but I must be in a state of mind that demands to see this thing right to the end and at no point stops and says I will go no further.

Now it must be obvious to me that I am a violent human being.  I have experienced violence in anger, violence in my sexual demands, violence in hatred, creating enmity, violence in jealousy and so on - I have experienced it, I have known it, and I say to myself, 'I want to understand this whole problem not just one fragment of it expressed in war, but this aggression in man which also exists in the animals and of which I am a part.'

Violence is not merely killing another.  It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear.  So violence isn't merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country.  Violence is much more subtle, much deeper, and we are inquiring into the very depths of violence.

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent.  Do you see why it is violent?  Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind.  When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence.  So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.

The moment you protect your family, your country, a bit of coloured rag called a flag, a belief, an idea, a dogma, the thing that you demand or that you hold, that very protection indicates anger.  So can you look at anger without any explanation or justification, without saying, 'I must protect my ...? Can you look at anger as if it were something by itself?  Can you look at it completely objectively, which means neither defending it nor condemning it? Can you?

But to be beyond violence I cannot suppress it, I cannot deny it, I cannot say, 'Well, it is a part of me and that's that', or  'I don't want it'.  I have to look at it, I have to study it, I must become very intimate with it and I cannot become intimate with it if I condemn it or justify it...  you have to learn how to look at anger, how to look at your husband, your wife, your children; you have to listen to the politician, you have to learn why you are not objective, why you condemn or justify.  You have to learn that you condemn and justify because it is part of the social structure you live in, your conditioning as a German or an Indian or a Negro or an American or whatever you happen to have been born with all the dulling of the mind that this conditioning results in.  

To live completely, fully, in the moment is to live with what is, the actual, without any sense of condemnation or justification... the face of violence is not only outside you but inside you.

~ J. Krishnamurti

excerpt from: Freedom from the Known

I am, you anxious one

I am, you anxious one.

Don't you sense me, ready to break

into being at your touch?

My murmurings surround you like shadowy wings.

Can't you see me standing before you

cloaked in stillness?

Hasn't my longing ripened in you

from the beginning

as fruit ripens on a branch?

I am the dream you are dreaming.

When you want to awaken, I am that wanting:

I grow strong in the beauty you behold.

And with the silence of stars I enfold

your cities made by time.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

art by Luca Longobardi

bad year

Even in this bad year,
the apples grow heavy and round.
Three friends and I trade stories:
biopsy, miscarriage, solitude,
a parent's unravelling body or mind.
What is reliable? What do you hold?
I demand of the future, later.
The future - whose discretion is perfect -
says nothing, but rolls another
apple loose from its grip.
A hopeful yellow jacket comes to hunt
the crack, the point of easy entry.




~ Jane Hirshfield
from  After

darkmotherscream

Darkmotherscream is a Siberian dance,
cry from prison or a yell for help,
or, perhaps, God has another word for it -
ominous little grin – darkmotherscream.

Darkmotherscream is the ecstasy of the sexual gut;
We let the past sink into darkmotherscream also.
You, we – oooh with her eyes closed
woman moans in ecstasy – darkmother, darkmotherscream.

Darkmotherscream is the original mother of languages.
It is silly to trust mind, silly to argue against it.
Prognosticating by computers
We leave out darkmotherscream.

“How’s it going?” Darkmotherscream.
“Motherscream! Motherscream!”
“OK, we’ll do it, we’ll do it.”

The teachers can’t handle darkmotherscream.
That is why Lermontov is untranslatable.
When the storm sang in Yelabuga,
What did it say to her? Darkmotherscream.

Meanwhile go on dancing, drunker and drunker.
“Shagadam magadam – darkmotherscream.”
Don’t forget – Rome fell
not having grasped the phrase: darkmotherscream.



~ Andrei Voznesensky
translated by Robert Bly and Vera Dunham
art by Jackson Pollock


 

I was the forest

When I was the stream, when I was the

forest, when I was still the field,

when I was every hoof, foot,

fin and wing, when I

was the sky

itself,

no one ever asked me did I have a purpose, no one ever

wondered was there anything I might need,

for there was nothing

I could not

love.

It was when I left all we once were that

the agony began, the fear and questions came,

and I wept, I wept. And tears

I had never known

before.

So I returned to the river, I returned to

the mountains. I asked for their hand in marriage again,

I begged – I begged to wed every object

and creature,

and when they accepted,

God was ever present in my arms.

And He did not say,

“Where have you

been?”

For then I knew my soul – every soul -

has always held

Him.

~ Meister Eckhart

Daniel Ladinsky translation

love after love

The time will come

when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror,

and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

~ Derek Walcott

from Collected Poems

old joy

Come into animal presence

No man is so guileless as

the serpent. The lonely white

rabbit on the roof is a star

twitching its ears at the rain.

The llama intricately

folding its hind legs to be seated

not disdains but mildly

disregards human approval.

What joy when the insouciant

armadillo glances at us and doesn't

quicken his trotting

across the track and into the palm brush.

What is this joy? That no animal

falters, but knows what it must do?

That the snake has no blemish,

that the rabbit inspects his strange surroundings

in white star-silence? The llama

rests in dignity, the armadillo

has some intention to pursue in the palm-forest.

Those who were sacred have remained so,

holiness does not dissolve, it is a presence

of bronze, only the sight that saw it

faltered and turned from it.

An old joy returns in holy presence.

~ Denise Levertov

 from Poems: 1960-1967

She wrote: "I'm not very good at praying, but what I experience when I'm writing a poem is close to prayer. I feel it in different degrees and not with every poem. But in certain ways writing is a form of prayer."

still water

The non-action of the wise man is not inaction.

It is not studied.  It is not shaken by anything.

The sage is quiet because he is not moved,

Not because he wills to be quiet.

Still water is like glass.

You can look in it and see the bristles on your chin.

It is a perfect level;

A carpenter could use it.

If water is so clear, so level,

How much more the spirit of man?

The heart of the wise man is tranquil.

It is the mirror of heaven and earth

The glass of everything.

Emptiness, stillness, tranquility, tastelessness,

Silence, non-action: this is the level of heaven and earth.

This is perfect Tao. Wise men find here

Their resting place.

Resting, they are empty.

From emptiness comes the unconditioned.

From this, the conditioned, the individual things.

So from the sage's emptiness, stillness arises:

From stillness, action. From action, attainment.

From their stillness comes their non-action, which is also action

And is, therefore, their attainment.

For stillness is joy.  Joy is free from care.

Fruitful in long years.

Joy does all things without concern:

For emptiness, stillness, tranquility, tastelessness,

Silence, and non-action

Are the root of all things.

~ Chuang Tzu

translation by Thomas Merton

from joy

From joy all beings are born,

By joy they are all sustained,

And into joy they again return.

~ Taittiriya Upanishad

among the multitudes

I am who I am.
A coincidence no less unthinkable
than any other.
I could have different
ancestors, after all.
I could have fluttered
from another nest
or crawled bescaled
from another tree.

Nature's wardrobe
holds a fair
supply of costumes:
Spider, seagull, fieldmouse.
each fits perfectly right off
and is dutifully worn
into shreds.

I didn't get a choice either,
but I can't complain.
I could have been someone
much less separate.
someone from an anthill, shoal, or buzzing swarm,
an inch of landscape ruffled by the wind.

Someone much less fortunate,
bred for my fur
or Christmas dinner,
something swimming under a square of glass.

A tree rooted to the ground
as the fire draws near.

A grass blade trampled by a stampede
of incomprehensible events.

A shady type whose darkness
dazzled some.
What if I'd prompted only fear,
Loathing,
or pity?

If I'd been born
in the wrong tribe
with all roads closed before me?

Fate has been kind
to me thus far.

I might never have been given
the memory of happy moments

My yen for comparison
might have been taken away.

I might have been myself minus amazement,
that is, someone completely different.

~ Wislawa Szymborska

 from Poems, New and Collected

 

you are this ... you want to become that

The mind has an idea, perhaps pleasurable, and it wants to be like that idea, 

which is a projection of your desire. You are this, which you do not like, 

and you want to become that, which you like. The ideal is a self-projection; 

the opposite is an extension of what is; it is not the opposite at all, 

but a continuity of what is, perhaps somewhat modified. 

The projection is self-willed, and conflict is the struggle towards the projection. 

You are struggling to become something, and that something is part of yourself. 

The ideal is your own projection. See how the mind has played a trick upon itself.

You are struggling after words, pursuing your own projection, your own shadow. 

You are violent, and you are struggling to become nonviolent, 

the ideal;

 but the ideal is a projection of what is, 

only under a different name.

When you are aware of this trick that you have played upon yourself, 

then the false as the false is seen. 

The struggle towards an illusion is the disintegrating factor. 

All conflict, all becoming is disintegration. 

When there is an awareness of this trick that the mind has played upon itself, 

then there is only what is. 

When the mind is stripped of all becoming, 

of all ideals, of all comparison and condemnation, 

when its own structure has collapsed,

then the what is has undergone complete transformation. 

As long as there is the naming of what is, 

there is relationship between the mind and what is; 

but when this naming process - which is memory, the very structure of the mind 

-is not, then what is is not. 

In this transformation alone is there integration.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from The Book of Life

this moment

this moment
when compared to
remembered moments
is boring

but if I look closely
at all remembered moments
I find them just as boring
and for the same reason

the missing moment
the beautiful moment
the perfect moment
where all is fine
DOES NOT EXIST 
it must be created
by taking any boring moment
(like this current moment)
and realizing quite clearly
that the only thing preventing
this moment from being
that beautiful moment
(that special moment)
is the act of comparison

one must embrace this boring moment
and make it that special moment

otherwise it will never exist




~ Benjamin Dean

tired of judging

Written in my hut on a snowy evening

Reflecting over seventy years,

I am tired of judging right from wrong.

Faint traces of a path trodden in deep night snow.

A stick of incense under the rickety window.

~ Ryokan

from Sky Above, Great Wind: The life and Poetry of Zen Master Ryokan

by Kazuaki Tanahashi

  

being without there being a center

These days many people are finding their way into “selflessness” or “centerlessness”—

the state of being without there being a center or separate experiencer.

 People realize this state through self-inquiry, using questions like

 

 “Who or what is experiencing this moment?”

 

People may struggle for a few minutes thinking that the word “me” is the experiencer, 

but after a few affirmations, most people who engage in this type of inquiry

 can see that, yes, the idea of “me” or “I” is a particular idea that’s also being experienced. 

 Some people find it easy to discover selflessness using the perceptual doorways

 made famous by Douglas Harding’s “experiments.” We point one of our fingers

 at our face and see that we can never see, never find, what our finger is pointing at. 

 The finger points at a space, a clearing, that is the centerless universe

 that circumscribes our reality.

Moreover, if we try to find the “absence of a center,” or a “self,” or “me,” 

we can’t find what’snot there. So, contrary to what some people conclude,

 we can’t say that there is “no self,” or “no experiencer,” either. 

We are left speechless, seeing that we neither exist nor don’t exist.

Sometimes people get nervous when they first encounter the realization

 that there is no findable “me” that sits in our head, or stands behind everything out there.

 People fear that the bottom of their lives might fall out. 

 

But, if we look at what really happens, nothing changes at all.

 Our fear is baseless because, while we can’t find ourselves, 

equally we can’t conclude that we don’t exist. We have no basis at all for saying

 “Who we aren’t!” If we look at things, we are here—you and I—

and everyone else is exactly where they are.

 And yet we are all unfindable!

At this point you might be thinking, “I can’t think about ‘this’.” 

 And, yes, that’s precisely the case. We can’t think about “this.”

 We are beyond dualistic concepts. We can’t even say, “we are beyond.”

 Nothing whatsoever changes when we realize selflessness because a self

 was never there in the first place. We might think that something goes away

 (the self) but it doesn’t.

 There is nothing to disappear!

This realization is wonderful because it creates a sense of open, 

unbounded, freedom that’s completely fused with the infinitely complex 

mandala of our unique, empirical existence. This realization allows us to be totally

 free in the same moment that we are, effectively, trapped in the particulars

 of our moment-by-moment experience. Think about it, in this moment, 

nothing can be different. The thought we are thinking displaces every other thought,

 if we are inhaling we can’t be exhaling. The word you are reading right now 

can’t be another word, because this is the one that’s here. Your body can’t be

 in a different location in this very moment, because it is where it is.

 Every square centimeter of our life-world is filled to the limits 

with a panoramic display of colors, shapes, sensations and thought-forms. 

We are engulfed in a seamless and totalizing sea of sensations and cognition

 that has no ruptures or interruptions.

If you’re like me, your capacity for resting in the ground of being is highly conditioned.

 The external circumstances and state of my body-mind need to be “just right”

 if I’m to have any chance of resting in awareness. Even when things are just right, 

I can still be distracted by my “important” projects or necessary interests,

 like thinking that I really need to know the current updates in world news.

 It takes just a small discomfort to wish that “things were different.” 

 Frustrations, anxieties, fears, annoyances, boredoms, and vulnerabilities abound.

Gradual evolution

The path for many people is gradual. Moments of selfless awareness arise within the larger context of our life—all the events that happen from our birth, initial awakening, on into death and beyond. The first recognition of pure, primordial awareness may occur as a child, or the serene setting of a contemplative dialogue with a nondual master, after years of meditation practice, while taking in a sunset, or in dokusan with a Zen roshi. Or, perhaps we are introduced to the nature of mind by watching a YouTube video or informally in a café when a friend who knows this space shares the unfindable “this.” Sometimes the first recognition happens spontaneously without any obvious precondition. One day, everything drops away and we find ourselves in a space that’s like the open sky: beyond all concepts and feelings. Or, perhaps this realization creeps up on us, and we can’t say exactly when we first become aware of the fact that we can’t find ourselves.

Having tasted the goal, the path consists of incrementally expanding and deepening our capacity to abide more continuously and reliably in selfless awareness as we engage the full range of experiences that are delivered to us by our karmically conditioned body-mind. The scope for integrating what’s possible within the extremes of nirvana and samsara are enormous. Perhaps it has no limit.

Universal awakening: limitless integration

In Mahayana Buddhism the scope for our evolution is said to be inconceivably vast. Quantum physics leads to the conclusion: “If it can happen, it will.” Mahayana takes this further saying, “Everything can happen, and already is.”

The scope for deepening and expanding the embodied realization of selflessness is limitless. According to the Mahayana, there is no conceivable event or experience that can disturb the vast, open-minded equanimity of a buddha. For a buddha, violent emotional invasions are received as whispered teachings of “perfect wisdom.” Mental energies that would otherwise be experienced as psychological anguish and torment auto-liberate into a continuous stream of meditative quietude. Physical pain is instantly and continuously transmuted by buddhamind into super-sensory pleasure. For buddhas, energy in any form is the currency of bliss—exchangeable like dollars and euros for whatever we wish. They live continuously in a “heaven on earth.”

One of my teachers, Lama Thubten Yeshe, often used the example of atomic power. Awakened beings radiate a fusion-energy field. They live in a matrix, a holographic mandala, that penetrates other people’s psyche and transforms any environment they inhabit. The realization of buddhas is contagious, like a chain reaction. Lama Yeshe embodied this capacity himself. In the space of one or two minutes he would do a complete make-over of people’s limited conception of themselves. They would arrive at his doorstep feeling very miserable about themselves, and leave a few minutes later with a life-changing experience of their spiritual potential.

Even though we are just scratching the surface of these buddha-like capacities, it’s inspiring to see that we have everything that’s needed to follow the same path to universal awakening (mahabodhi). We are aware, and more over, we can see that we can be free in the moment without anything needing to change at all.

Pure perception

Within the vision of universal awakening, a gap between where we are now and the irreversible liberation of all mind-streams, is creatively and lovingly bridged by visioning the ideal spaces within which people can wake up and be constantly suffused and infused with the nectar of selfless awareness. This is called “pure perception.”

“Pure perception” arises naturally when we see that there is no end to the dimensions and realities that can be touched and transformed by the liberating field of selfless awareness. Ultimately, there is no other work to do. We learn to how to think, feel and live at the result-level. The type of visioning I’m talking about here comes to us effortlessly as we tune into precisely what people need in the moment in order to abide in the primordial state.

As the Buddha says in the Prajnaparamita Sutra:

Bodhisattvas are ceaselessly inspired by the conviction that the infinitely diverse structures of relativity, far from being some dangerous disease, are actually a healing medicine. Why? Because in their intrinsically selfless nature, interdependent structures perfectly express the mystery and transmit the spiritual energy of universal companionship. Not just awakened sages but all structures of relativity are dwellers in the boundlessness which constitutes all-embracing love, selfless compassion, sympathetic joy and blissful equanimity.

The wonderful thing about “pure perception” is that we can taste it now. By definition, this is the nature of pure perception. Pure perception is never something that happens in the future. The idea that “pure perception” can only happen in the future, degrades the very quality of this experience itself. In pure perception we bring an exalted appreciation to our experience of the world, including our own physical form. We see the intrinsic harmony within and between all phenomena. We experience the seamless, unimpeded flow of everything that arises and dissolves within the reality-sphere that is the mandala of our own existence. Nothing is out of place; everything gives unique expression to an infinite network of conditions that are implicated in every manifestation from the most minuscule to the most cosmic, from the most insignificant to the most magnificent. Everything is revealed as an expression of the unfindable vastness.

~ Peter Fenner

from natural awakening