Tuesday, October 22, 2019

the look of its landlord






For in this house, everything
has the look of its landlord.

While the hand moves
the shadow must follow.
Since the shadow gains its substance
from the hand
it has none of itself,
That which derives existence
from something else 
how can we say
it truly exists?

It has a name, yes,
but is not that existence
which subsists through God.



~ Fakhruddin Iraqi
from Divine Flashes



Some thought that all these loves were copies of 
our love for the landlord.


~ C.S. Lewis 
from God in the Dock

Monday, October 21, 2019

no expectations







A spirit that lives in this world
And does not wear the shirt of love,
Such an existence is a deep disgrace.

Be foolish in love,
Because love is all there is.

There is no way into presence
Except through a love exchange.

If someone asks, But what is love?
Answer, Dissolving the will.

True freedom comes to those
Who have escaped the questions
Of freewill and fate.

Love is an emperor.
The two worlds play across him.
He barely notices their tumbling game.

Love and lover live in eternity.
Other desires are substitutes
For that way of being.

How long to you lay embracing a corpse?
Love rather the soul, which cannot be held.

Anything born in the spring dies in the fall,
But love is not seasonal.

With wine pressed from grapes,
Expect a hangover.

But this love path has no expectations.
You are uneasy riding the body?
Dismount.  Travel lighter.
Wings will be given.

Be clear like a mirror
Reflecting nothing.

Be clean of pictures and the worry 
That comes with images.

Gaze into what is not ashamed
Or afraid of any truth.

Contain all human faces in your own
Without any judgement of them.

Be pure emptiness.
What is inside that? You ask.
Silence is all I can say.

Lovers have some secrets
That they keep.



~ Rumi
From: Rumi - Bridge to the Soul
Translation by Coleman Barks


Sunday, October 20, 2019

peace of Self





If one gains the Peace of Self,
 it will spread without any effort on the part of the individual.
When one is not peaceful, oneself, how can one spread peace in the world?
Unless one is happy,  one cannot bestow happiness on others. 


 Happiness is born of Peace and can reign only when there is no disturbance.
  Disturbance is due to thoughts,  which arise in the mind.  
When the mind is absent there will be perfect Peace.

The ultimate truth is so simple; 
 it is nothing more than being in one's natural original state. 
 Because people want elaborate and mysterious,
 so many religions have come into existence. 



~ Ramana Maharshi

the thought "I"







Thoughts arise because of the thinker.
The thinker is the ego, which if sought will automatically vanish.

Reality is simply loss of the ego.
Destroy the ego by seeking its identity.

Because the ego has no real existence, it will automatically vanish,
 and Reality will shine forth by itself in all its glory.

This is the direct method.
All other methods retain the ego,  In those paths so many doubts arise,
 and the eternal question remains to be tackled. 
 But in this method the final question is the only one 
and is raised from the very beginning.

No practices are even necessary for this quest.

The cause of misery is not in life without;  it is within you as the ego.
You impose limitations on yourself and then make a vain struggle to transcend them.

Why attribute to the happenings in life the cause of misery,
 which really lies within you?  What happiness can you get
 from anything extraneous to yourself?  
When you get it, how long will it last?

There are no stages to Realization of degrees of Liberation. 
 There are no levels of Reality; 
 there are only levels of experience for the individual.

It is not a matter of becoming but of being.
Remain aware of yourself and all else will be known.




~ Ramana Maharshi



Saturday, October 19, 2019

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

Friday, October 18, 2019

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


Thursday, October 17, 2019

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




Wednesday, October 16, 2019

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