unmasking pretense

We never value or even see some things in our lives until we are just about to lose them.
  This is particularly true of health.  When we are in good health, 
we are so busy in the world that we never even notice how well we are.
  Illness comes and challenges everything about us.  It unmasks all pretension. 
 When you are really ill, you cannot mask it.  

Illness also tests the inner fiber and luminosity of your soul. 
 It is very difficult to take illness well.  
Yet it seems that if we treat our illness as something external
 that has singled us out, and we battle and resist it, 
the illness will refuse to leave. 
 On the other hand, we must not identify ourselves with our illness.
  A visit to a hospital often shows that very ill people are more alive
 to life's possibilities than the medical verdict would ever allow or imagine.

When we learn to see our illness as a companion or friend,
 it really does change the way the illness is present. 
 The illness changes from a horrible intruder to a companion
 who has something to teach us.  When we see what we have to learn
 from an illness, then often the illness can gather itself and begin to depart.
.. Sometimes, when you see a thing as the enemy, 
you only reinforce its presence and power over you... 
Held openly, as a friend, this bit of unknown aliveness 
may take you on an amazing journey to places you may have never anticipated. 
 Such attention enriches and deepens gentleness and presence.

~ John O'Donohue

from Eternal Echoes

.

moses and the shepherd

Moses heard a shepherd on the road praying,

“God,

where are you? I want to help you, to fix your shoes

and comb your hair. I want to wash your clothes

and pick the lice off. I want to bring you milk

to kiss your little hands and feet when it’s time

for you to go to bed. I want to sweep your room

and keep it neat. God, my sheep and goats

are yours. All I can say, remembering you,

is ayyyy and ahhhhhhhhh.”

Moses could stand it no longer.

“Who are you talking to?”

“The one who made us,

and made the earth and made the sky.”

“Don’t talk about shoes

and socks with God! And what’s this with your little hands

and feet? Such blasphemous familiarity sounds like

you’re chatting with your uncles.

Only something that grows

needs milk. Only someone with feet needs shoes. Not God!

Even if you meant God’s human representatives,

as when God said, ‘I was sick, and you did not visit me,’

even then this tone would be foolish and irreverent.

Use appropriate terms. Fatima is a fine name

for a woman, but if you call a man Fatima,

it’s an insult. Body-and-birth language

are right for us on this side of the river,

but not for addressing the origin,

not for Allah.”

The shepherd repented and tore his clothes and sighed

and wandered out into the desert.

A sudden revelation

came then to Moses. God’s voice:

You have separated me

from one of my own. Did you come as a Prophet to unite,

or to sever?

I have given each being a separate and unique way

of seeing and knowing and saying that knowledge.

What seems wrong to you is right for him.

What is poison to one is honey to someone else.

Purity and impurity, sloth and diligence in worship,

these mean nothing to me.

I am apart from all that.

Ways of worshiping are not to be ranked as better

or worse than one another.

Hindus do Hindu things.

The Dravidian Muslims in India do what they do.

It’s all praise, and it’s all right.

It’s not me that’s glorified in acts of worship.

It’s the worshipers! I don’t hear the words

they say. I look inside at the humility.

That broken-open lowliness is the reality,

not the language! Forget phraseology.

I want burning, burning.

Be friends

with your burning. Burn up your thinking

and your forms of expression!

Moses,

those who pay attention to ways of behaving

and speaking are one sort.

Lovers who burn

are another.

Don’t impose a property tax

on a burned-out village. Don’t scold the Lover.

The “wrong” way he talks is better than a hundred

“right” ways of others.

Inside the Kaaba

it doesn't matter which direction you point

your prayer rug!

The ocean diver doesn't need snowshoes!

The love-religion has no code or doctrine.

Only God.

So the ruby has nothing engraved on it!

It doesn't need markings.

God began speaking

deeper mysteries to Moses. Vision and words,

which cannot be recorded here, poured into

and through him. He left himself and came back.

He went to eternity and came back here.

Many times this happened.

It’s foolish of me

to try and say this. If I did say it,

it would uproot our human intelligences.

It would shatter all writing pens.

Moses ran after the shepherd.

He followed the bewildered footprints,

in one place moving straight like a castle

across a chessboard. In another, sideways,

like a bishop.

Now surging like a wave cresting,

now sliding down like a fish,

with always his feet

making geomancy symbols in the sand,

recording

his wandering state.

Moses finally caught up

with him.

“I was wrong. God has revealed to me

that there are no rules for worship.

Say whatever

and however your loving tells you to. Your sweet blasphemy

is the truest devotion. Through you a whole world

is freed.

Loosen your tongue and don’t worry what comes out.

It’s all the light of the spirit.”

The shepherd replied,

“Moses, Moses,

I’ve gone beyond even that.

You applied the whip and my horse shied and jumped

out of itself. The divine nature and my human nature

came together.

Bless your scolding hand and your arm.

I can’t say what has happened.

What I’m saying now

is not my real condition. It can’t be said.”

The shepherd grew quiet.

When you look in a mirror,

you see yourself, not the state of the mirror.

The flute player puts breath into a flute,

and who makes the music? Not the flute.

The flute player!

Whenever you speak praise

or thanksgiving to God, it’s always like

this dear shepherd’s simplicity.

When you eventually see

through the veils to how things really are,

you will keep saying again

and again,

“This is certainly not like

we thought it was!”

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks

into your heart

You must descend from

your head into your heart.

At present your thoughts of God

are in your head.  And God Himself is,

as it were, outside you, and 

so your prayer and other spiritual

exercises

remain exterior.  Whilst you are still

in your head,

thoughts will not easily be subdued but

will always be whirling about, like snow

in winter or

clouds of mosquitoes in summer.

~ Saint Theophan the Recluse

(an orthodox monk from 19th century Russia)

three mornings

In Istanbul, my ears

three mornings heard the early call to prayer.

At fuller light, heard birds then,

water birds and tree birds, birds of migration.

Like three knowledges,

I heard them: incomprehension,

sweetened distance, longing.

When the body dies, where will they go,

those migrant birds and prayer calls,

as heat from sheets when taken from a dryer?

With voices of the ones I loved,

great loves and small loves, train wheels,

crickets, clock-ticks, thunder—where will they,

when in fragrant, tumbled heat they also leave?

~ Jane Hirshfield

from harvard divinity school

how to continue

Oh there once was a woman

and she kept a shop

selling trinkets to tourists

not far from a dock

who came to see what life could be

far back on the island.

And it was always a party there

always different but very nice

New friends to give you advice

or fall in love with you which is nice

and each grew so perfectly from the other

it was a marvel of poetry

and irony

And in this unsafe quarter

much was scary and dirty

but no one seemed to mind

very much

the parties went on from house to house

There were friends and lovers galore

all around the store

There was moonshine in winter

and starshine in summer

and everybody was happy to have discovered

what they discovered

And then one day the ship sailed away

There were no more dreamers just sleepers

in heavy attitudes on the dock

moving as if they knew how

among the trinkets and the souvenirs

the random shops of modern furniture

and a gale came and said

it is time to take all of you away

from the tops of the trees to the little houses

on little paths so startled

And when it became time to go

they none of them would leave without the other

for they said we are all one here

and if one of us goes the other will not go

and the wind whispered it to the stars

the people all got up to go

and looked back on love

~ John Ashbery

from Notes from the Air: Selected Later Poems

the cocktail party

Unidentified Guest:

Ah, but we die to each other daily. 

What we know of other people is only our memory 

of the moments during which we knew them. 

And they have changed since then. 

To pretend that they and we are the same is a 

useful and convenient social convention 

which must sometimes be broken. 

We must also remember that at every meeting 

we are meeting a stranger. 

Edward:

So you want me to greet my wife as a stranger?

That will not be easy.

Unidentified Guest:

It is very difficult.

But it is perhaps still more difficult

To keep up the pretense that you are not strangers.

The affectionate ghosts: the grandmother,

The lively bachelor uncle at the Christmas party,

The beloved nursemaid - those who enfold

Your childhood years in comfort, mirth, security-

If they returned, would it not be embarrassing?

What would you say to them, or they to you

After the first ten minutes? You would find it difficult

To treat them as strangers, but still more difficult

To pretend that you are not strange to each other.

Edward:

You can hardly expect me to obliterate the last five years.

Unidentified Guest:

I ask you to forget nothing.  To try to forget

is to try to conceal.

Edward:

There are certainly things I should like to forget.

Unidentified Guest:

And persons also, but you must not forget them. You must

face them all, but meet them as strangers.  

Edward:

Then I myself must also be a stranger.

Unidentified Guest:

And to you as well, but remember

When you see your wife, you must ask no questions 

and give no explanations. I have said the same to her.

Do not strangle each other with knotted memories.

Now I shall go.

~ T. S. Eliot

excerpt from The Cocktail Party,

The Complete Poem and Plays

1909-1950

art by Teresa Bingham

Don’t squeeze the way of Buddha into any frame.

To you who can’t stop worrying about how others see you

You can’t even trade a single fart with the next guy. 
Each and every one of us has to live out his own life.
 Don’t waste time thinking about who’s most talented.

The eyes don’t say, “Sure we’re lower, but we see more.”

The eyebrows don’t reply, “Sure we don’t see anything, but we are higher up.”

Living out the buddha-dharma means fulfilling your function completely
 without knowing that you’re doing it. A mountain doesn’t know it’s tall.
 The sea doesn’t know it’s wide and deep. Each and every thing
 in the universe is active without knowing it.

The bird’s singing and the flower’s laughter appear naturally,

completely independent from the person sitting in zazen at the foot of the cliff.

The bird doesn’t sing in honor of the person in zazen.
 The flower doesn’t blossom to amaze the person with her beauty. 
In exactly the same way, the person doesn’t sit in zazen
 in order to get satori. Every single being simply realizes the self,
 through the self, for the self.

Religion means living your own life, 
completely fresh and new, without being taken in by anyone.

Hey! What are you looking at? Don’t you see that it’s about you?

The asshole doesn’t need to be ashamed of being the asshole. 
The feet don’t have any reason to go on strike just because they’re only feet.
 The head isn’t the most important of all, and the navel doesn’t need to imagine
 he’s the father of all things. 

It’s strange though that people look at the prime minister
 as an especially important person. The nose can’t replace the eyes,
 and the mouth can’t replace the ears.

Everything has its own identity,
 which is unsurpassable in the whole universe.

Some children have caught a mouse and now it’s writhing in the trap. 
They’re having fun watching how it scrapes its nose till it bleeds
 and how it rips up its tail . . . In the end they’ll throw it to the cat for food.

If I was sitting in the mouse’s place, I’d say to myself,
 “You damn humans won’t have any fun with me!” 
And I’d simply sit zazen..

To you who wish you could lead a happier life

“Rest awhile and everything will be fine.”

We simply need to take a short break. Being buddha means taking a short break
 from being a human. Being buddha doesn’t mean working your way up as a human.

What makes Ryōkan so refreshing is that he doesn’t fondle things.

In everything, people follow their feelings of joy, anger, sadness and comfort.
 But that’s something different from everyday mind. 
Everyday mind means cease-fire. Without preferences, without animosity,
 without winner and loser, without good and evil, without joy and pain
 – that’s everyday mind.

“What sort of person stands on the ground where there’s neither coming nor going?”

Kyūhō answered, “The stone sheep versus the stone tiger: 
sooner or later they’ll get tired of staring each other in the eyes.” 
The stone sheep won’t flinch. The stone tiger won’t jump out of hunger. 
That’s the point – encountering things beyond thinking.

What do we have when we truly have a grip on things as they are? 
Beyond-thinking [hishiryō]. Beyond-thinking doesn’t allow itself to be thought.
 No matter if you think so or not: things are simply as they are.

“All things are empty” means there’s nothing we can run into,
 because nothing is really happening. We only think something’s happening
 because we are intoxicated by something.

Nothing is ever happening, no matter what seems to be going on 
– that’s the natural condition. Illusion means losing this natural condition.
 Normally we don’t recognize this natural condition.
 Normally we cover it with something else, so it’s not natural anymore.

The buddha-dharma means the normal condition. 
Yet in the world everything is unnatural.
 Domineering, succumbing and discussing everything to death are unnatural.

Each place fills heaven and earth, every instant is eternal.

To practice the way of Buddha means to completely live out this present moment 
– which is our whole life – here and now.

Don’t squeeze the way of Buddha into any frame.

~ Kodo Sawaki

excerpts from To you

Translated from Japanese by Jesse Haasch and Muhô 

pastures of possibility

.

More often than not, we have picked up the habits of thinking of those around us.
  These thought-habits are not yours; they can damage the way you see the world 
and make you doubt your own instinct and sense of life. 
 When you become aware that your thinking has a life of its own,
 you will never make a prison of your own perception. 
 Your vision is your home.  A closed vision always wants to make a small room
 out of whatever it sees.  Thinking that limits you denies you life. 

 In order to deconstruct the inner prison, the first step is learning to see that it is a prison.
  You can move in the direction of this discovery by reflecting on the places
 where your life feels limited and tight.  To recognize the crippling feeling
 of being limited is already to have begun moving beyond it.  
Heidegger said, "To recognize a frontier is already to have gone beyond it." 
 Life continues to remain faithful to us.  If we move even the smallest step
 out of our limitation, life comes to embrace us and lead us out into
 the pastures of possibility.

~ John O'Donohue
 from 'Eternal Echoes'

seeing and thinking

However, in the seeing of a tree for instance,
 there is no seer and there is no seen. There is no inside
 ‘I’ that sees and there is no outside ‘tree’ that is seen.

The ‘I’ and the ‘tree’ are concepts superimposed by thinking
 onto the reality of the experience, which in this case could simply be called
 ‘seeing’.

It is thinking alone that divides the seamless intimacy of experiencing 
into a subject and an object, into an ‘I’ that sees and a ‘tree’
 that is seen. However, awareness, or ‘I’ and the reality of the tree
 are not two separate experiences.
 They are one.

…The experience of beauty is the dissolution of the apparent ‘objectness’
 of the object and the ‘subjectness’ of our self,
 leaving only the seamless intimacy of experiencing.

~ Rupert Spira

from Presence - Volume II

a longing that burns

There is a longing that burns at the root of spiritual practice. 
This is the fire that fuels your journey. The romantic suffering 
you pretend to have grown out of, that remains coiled like a serpent 
beneath the veneer of maturity. You have studied the sacred texts.
 You know that separation from your divine source is an illusion. 
You subscribe to the philosophy that there is nowhere to go 
and nothing to attain, because you are already there
 and you already possess it.

But what about this yearning? What about the way a poem by Rilke
 or Rumi breaks open your heart and triggers a sorrow
 that could consume you if you gave in to it? You’re pretty sure 
this is not a matter of mere psychology. It has little to do with unresolved
 issues of childhood abandonment, or codependent tendencies
 to falsely place the source of your wholeness outside yourself.

 The longing is your recognition of the deepest truth
 that God is love and that this is all you want.
 Every lesser desire melts when it comes near that flame.



—Mirabai Starr

from Parabola  July 2017

art by Fra Angelico, c.1437–1446

find all the barriers

Your task is not to seek for love,
but merely to seek and find all the barriers
within yourself that you have built against it.

Then when you see what is around you as
not other-than-you, and all and everything as
the existence of the One;

when you do not see anything else
with Him or in him;

but see Him in everything as yourself and
at the same time as the nonexistence
of yourself;
then what you see is the truth.



~ Ibn Al-Arabi

to find himself in another

No, the great business of our time is this: 

for one man to find himself in another one who is on the other side of the world. 

Only by such contacts can there be peace, 

can the sacredness of life be preserved and developed 

and the image of God manifest itself in the world.

It is as if we met on a deeper level of life 

on which individuals are not separate beings...

it is as if we were known to one another in God.

...

Although we are separated by great distances and even greater barriers 

it gives me pleasure to speak to you as to one whom I feel to be a kindred mind....

...

It is true that a person always remains a person and utterly separate and apart from every other person. 

But it is equally true that each person is destined to reach with others an understanding and a unity which transcend individuality, and Russian tradition describes this with a concept we do not fully possess in the West- "sobornost."

from his letters to Boris Pasternak

~ Thomas Merton
from  A Life in Letters

art by Tony Karp

lifting of the burden

To me it seems that at those moments, which are characterized 
by the sudden lifting of the burden of anxiety and fear 
which presses upon our daily lives so steadily 
that we are unaware of it, 
what happens is something negative: that is to say, not ‘inspiration’ 
as we commonly think of it, but the breaking down of strong habitual barriers
—which tend to reform very quickly. 

Some obstruction is momentarily whisked away. 
The accompanying feeling is less like what we know as positive pleasure,
 than like a sudden relief from an intolerable burden.

~ T.S. Eliot

 describing moments of clarity and inspiration

art by Emil Nolde

a walk

Each time he took a walk, he felt as though he were leaving himself behind, 
and by giving himself up to the movement of the streets, 
by reducing himself to a seeing eye, he was able to escape the obligation to think,
 and this, more than anything else, brought him a measure of peace,
 a salutary emptiness within… By wandering aimlessly, 
all places became equal and it no longer mattered where he was. 
On his best walks he was able to feel that he was nowhere. 
And this, finally was all he ever asked of things: to be nowhere.

~ Paul Auster

from A Piece of Monologue

 

few are willing

To deliver oneself up,

to hand oneself over,

entrust oneself completely to the silence

of a wide landscape of woods and hills,

or sea and desert; to sit still while

the sun comes up over the land

and fills its silences with light.

...few are willing to belong completely

to such silence, to let it soak into their bones,

to breathe nothing but silence, to feed

on silence, and to turn the very substance of their life

into a living and vigilant silence.

~ Thomas Merton

from Thoughts in Solitude