through the lenses of our thoughts

The world is not simply there. Everything and everyone we see, we view through the lenses of our thoughts. Your mind is where your thoughts arise and form. It is not simply with your eyes but with your mind that you see the world. So much depends on your mind: How you see yourself, who you think you are, how you see others, what you think the meaning of life is, how you see death, belief, God, darkness and beauty is all determined by the style of mind you have.

Your mind is your greatest treasure. We become so taken up with the world, with having and doing more and more that we come to ignore who we are and forget what we see the world with. The most powerful way to change your life is to change your mind.

When you beautify your mind, you beautify your world. You learn to see differently. In what seemed like dead situations, secret possibilities and invitations begin to open before you. In old suffering that held you long paralyzed, you find new keys. When your mind awakens, your life comes alive and the creative adventure of your soul takes off. Passion and compassion become your new companions. As St. Iraneus said in the 2nd Century: The glory of God is the human person fully alive.

~ John O'Donohue

This was the title and description that John wrote for a talk
 he was scheduled to give in March of 2008.

mind and simplicity

~ Gangaji

I began as a bloom of cotton

I began as a bloom of cotton,

outdoors.  Then they brought me to a room

where they washed me.  Then the hard strokes

of the carder's wife.  Then another woman

spun thin threads, twisting me

around her wheel.  Then the kicks

of the weaver's loom made cloth, 

and on the washing stone, washermen

wet and slung me about

to their satisfaction, whitened me

with earth and bone,

and cleaned me to my own 

amazement.  Then the scissors

of the tailor, piece by piece,

and his careful finishing work.

Now, at last, as clothes,

I find You and freedom.

This living is so difficult

before one takes your hand.

~Lalla
from Naked Song

nothing pouring into Nothing

With repeated meditation practice

the expanse of the visible universe

with all its qualities dissolves

to nothing, to where there is 

only health and great joy.

All teaching comes to this.

*

With passionate practices

I held the reins secure on my mind

and made breath one column.

Then the new moon's clear 

nectar descended into me,

nothing pouring into Nothing.

*

When will my shame fall away?

When will I accept being mocked

and let my robe of dignity burn up?

When the wandering pony inside

comes calm to my hand.

*

It is God who yawns and sneezes

and coughs, and now laughs.

Look, it's God doing ablutions!

God deciding to fast, God going naked

from one New Year's Eve to the next.

Will you ever understand 

how near God is

to you?

~ Lalla

from Naked Song

translations by Coleman Barks

Lalla described herself as "a somewhat something moving dreamlike on a fading road."

vanished into wonder

What is, simply is,

And "I" am nowhere to be found.

Far from the village,

Road vanished into path,

Path vanished into hillside,

Hillside vanished into Vastness,

The Known vanished into Wonder,

Look!

~ Jnaneshwar

the 13th Century Indian

a 13th century saint who, although he lived only twenty-two years, left a profound impact on Hindu spirituality. In Jnaneshwar's writings, Shiva is the formless, unmanifest Absolute, and Shakti is manifest form. Shiva is "That", and Shakti is "This" – all that arises in and as That. But the most precious gift of Jnaneshwar is his communication in words of the inexpressible truth that Shiva and Shakti are One. Shakti is merely Shiva – unmanifest, objectless, unmoving – moving into and as form. Jnaneshwar brilliantly communicates this inexpressible truth through verse, in which "He" is Shiva, and "She" is Shakti.

commentary by Chuck Surface

jasmine

.

"Almost the twenty-first century" -

how quickly the thought will grow dated,

even quaint.

Our hopes, our future,

will pass like the hopes and futures of others.

And all our anxieties and terrors,

nights of sleeplessness,

griefs,

will appear then as they truly are -

Stumbling, delirious bees in the tea scent of jasmine.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from The Lives of the Heart

a tree within

A tree grew inside my head.

A tree grew in.

Its roots are veins,

its branches nerves,

thoughts its tangles foliage.

Day breaks

in the body’s night.

There, within, inside my head,

the tree speaks.

Come closer—can you hear it?

~ Octavio Paz

translation by Eliot Weinberger
art by Leticia Alaniz

the story of moths

One night, moths, who were driven by desire,

Met together to discuss their obsession

To see if it was one and the same.  They enquired:

'How can we know?'  Truth was their possession,

They thought, and sent forth one of their number to bring

Any information he could to feed their yearning.

He fluttered to and fro between the curtains of night

Till he spied a candle spluttering in a castle tower,

Then he reported back the wonder he saw on his flight.

But one amongst his friends whose knowledge gave him power

Said this messenger understood nothing at all about the candle.

So another moth was sent, he saw and touched the flame

With the tip of his wing, but his report had no handle

On the truth since the heat drove him off, he had no claim.

A third went forth, was so intoxicated with love 

He threw himself on the fire and was consumed.

The wise moth seeing how the flame fitted like a glove

The moth's glowing body, said when he resumed

His place amongst his peers: 'That moth now knows

What he can never utter nor any language ever disclose.'

~ Farid ud-Din Attar

from The Conference of the Birds

annihilate separation

How long can the moth flirt

near the mouth of the flame before their lips touch

and the moth’s soul

becomes like

a sun.

And does the moth then die? No.

In serving God one is transformed into Him.

What lovers would return to us,

what lovers would not unite beyond belief and annihilate

their separation forever if they

had the power

to do so?

That power our Lord has. How long do you think

you can just flirt with Him before you

dissolve in ecstasy?

Existence spins on His potter’s wheel;

all is being shaped into the Divine.

What lovers would

not want to die

embraced?

~ Meister Eckhart

associative leaps in poetry

excerpts from the essay entitled

so much happens when no one is watching 

by Daniel Deardorff

There are three things involved in making a associative leap:

a place to leap from, 

a place to leap to,

and most importantly, that space which is in-between.

Bly suggests that the in-between , the liminal space of the leap, provides a mysterious kind of content.  Bly calls our attention to the many things that happen "when no one is watching."  Pointing toward that which must remain outside our conscious awareness is like Lao Tzu saying that "knowing with not-knowing is best."  Connecting "what happens when no one is watching" to the emphasis on associativity, we notice a similar invitation to consider the unconscious space behind the associative image.  There is a great distance, swiftly traversed, between the philosopher and the predator in the line: "Plato wrote by the light from sharks' teeth."

One key to entering the vast spaces in Bly's thought in understanding is something I've called "associative alacrity" - the adroit capacity to form unexpected correlations,  In the modern world this capacity has been so repressed that it's hard to work out any sense of it.   In Norse mythology there is an ash tree that connects many worlds.  This "World Tree," called Yggdrasil, presents a complex image that works like this: at the top is the solar bird, the great eagle; at the bottom is the old lunar serpent.  The third thing, which connects this opposition, is something much less grand, a squirrel.  Leaping from branch to root, the acrobat squirrel carries messages between the extremities.  The furry mammal presents the limbic capacity to bridge the contradictions without reconciliation.  The squirrel is the embodiment of the leaping consciousness.

Leaping in this manner, the poems of Robert Bly refuse to turn away from Heaven, and at once, stubbornly refuse to renounce the earthly life.  "In a great ancient or modern poem, the considerable distance between the associations, the distance the spark has to leap, gives the lines their bottomless feeling, their space."  The relationships formed by these leaps are not linear - they are not stops along some rational railway, or some predictable system of linked facts - they are images or feelings related by something inexplicable and mysterious.  In this kind of association the distance, the interval or the leap, provides verticality and depth, a kind of bottomless content which functions as what Lawrence Hatab called "mythic disclosure": it does not explain things but "presents an intelligible picture of the lived world and the form of human involvement with the lived world."

In ancient times, in the "time of inspiration." the poet flew from

one world to another, "riding on dragons," as the Chinese said. 

Isaiah rode on those dragons, so did Li Po and Pindar.  They

dragged behind them long tails of dragon smoke.  Some of that 

dragon smoke still boils out of Beowulf. ...This dragon smoke 

means that a leap has taken place in the poem.

The associative paths... allow us to leap from one part of the brain

to another and lay out their contraries.  Moreover it's possible that

what we call "mythology" deals precisely with these abrupt juxtapositions...

using what Joseph Campbell called "mythological thinking," 

it moves the energy along a spectrum - either up or down. 

It can awaken the "lost music," walk on the sea, cross the 

river from instinct to spirit.

It is in the interval of the leap that "so much happens when no one is watching" and this is related to Richard Schechner's idea that certain rituals require "selective inattention."  He says: "Selective inattention allows patterns of the whole to be visible, patterns that otherwise would be burned out of the consciousness by a too intense concentration.

this essay is part of a collection in the book
Robert Bly - In This World

Driving Toward the Lac Qui Parle River

I

I am driving; it is dusk; Minnesota.

The stubble field catches the last growth of sun.

The soybeans are breathing on all sides.

Old men are sitting before their houses on car seats

In the small towns. I am happy,

The moon rising above the turkey sheds.

II

The small world of the car

Plunges through the deep fields of the night,

On the road from Willmar to Milan.

This solitude covered with iron

Moves through the fields of night

Penetrated by the noise of crickets.

III

Nearly to Milan, suddenly a small bridge,

And water kneeling in the moonlight.

In small towns the houses are built right on the ground;

The lamplight falls on all fours on the grass.

When I reach the river, the full moon covers it.

A few people are talking, low, in a boat.

~ Robert Bly

wherelings whenlings

wherelings whenlings
(daughters of if but offspring of hopefear
sons of unless and children of almost)
never shall guess the dimension of

him whose
each
foot likes the
here of this earth

whose both
eyes
love
this now of the sky

- endlings of isn’t
shall never
begin
to begin to

imagine how(only are shall be were
dawn dark rain snow rain
- bow;
a

moon
’s whis-
per
in sunset

or thrushes toward dusk among whippoorwills or
tree field rock hollyhock forest brook chikadee
mountain. Mountain)
whycoloured worlds of because do

not stand against yes which is built by
forever; sunsmell
(sometimes a wonder
of wild roses

sometimes)
with north
over
the barn




~ e.e. cummings

individuality

The world is not in need of improvement.  Stated another way, the world is not the problem...

When we detach from the thinking mind, perceiving senses, doing body, happy/unhappy person we regain right view.  In that, all is well. 

You have been trained since infancy to direct your attention to what is temporary. Had anyone before revealed the Permanent to you, there would be no need to sit with Wu Hsin. 

Most people don’t sit because they are afraid of what is revealed. 

The individuals fear that they will lose their individuality, their identity. One could say that the love of Being is not yet greater than the love of being somebody … or it could be said that the fear of the not yet known is far greater than the distaste for the known. 

Either way, “I’ll pay any price” is suddenly shown to be a hollow offer.

When you become clear that you are not this body, but that it is your instrument, then worries about death dissolve. 

In essence, death dies.

~ Wu Hsin

from  the introduction to Behind the Mind: 

A Short Discourse with Wu Hsin

who looks

All day I think about it, then at night I say it.

Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?

I have no idea.

My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that,

and I intend to end up there.

This drunkenness began in some other tavern.

When I get back around to that place,

I'll be completely sober. Meanwhile,

I'm like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.

The day is coming when I fly off,

but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?

Who says words with my mouth?

Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul? 

I cannot stop asking.

If I could taste one sip of an answer,

I could break out of this prison for drunks.

I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.

Whoever brought me here, will have to take me home.

This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say.

I don't plan it.

When I'm outside the saying of it,

I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks

.

pocket of fog

In the yard next door,

a pocket of fog like a small heard of bison

swallows azaleas, koi pond, the red-and-gold koi.

To be undivided must mean not knowing you are.

The fog grazes here, then there,

all morning browsing the shallows,

leaving no footprint between my fate and the mountain's.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from After

letting go of control

Letting go of control is a deeper relaxation, a floating on the ocean.  
You can become aware of where you are holding on,
 and you can just let go and allow the ocean to hold you.  
You can become aware that all your tension and clinging are unnecessary,
 and then relax and let yourself be supported.  
In this same way you can become aware of all the mental 
and emotional energy that gets exerted in holding on to a particular story,
 and you can just let it all go. 
 There is a deeper intelligence than the one you use to control, 
and it is present to be recognized in all lives, at all moments.

~ Gangaji

from: the Diamond in your Pocket