far away

Keep far away.

You should never be here too much; be so far away that they can’t find you,

 they can’t get at you to shape, to mold.

Be so far away, like the mountains, like the unpolluted air;

 be so far away that you have no parents, no relations, no family, no country;

 be so far away that you don’t know even where you are.

Don’t let them find you; don’t come into contact with them too closely.

Keep far away where even you can’t find yourself; keep a distance 

which can never be crossed over; keep a passage open always 

through which no one can come.

Don’t shut the door for there is no door, only an open, endless passage;

 if you shut any door, they will be very close to you, then you are lost.

Keep far away where their breath can’t reach you

 and their breath travels very far and very deeply; 

don’t get contaminated by them, by their word, by their gesture,

 by their great knowledge; they have great knowledge

 but be far away from them where even you cannot find yourself.

For they are waiting for you, at every corner, in every house to shape you, 

to mold you, to tear you to pieces and then put you together in their own image.

Their gods, the little ones and the big ones, are the images of themselves,

 carved by their own mind or by their own hands.

They are waiting for you, the churchman and the Communist,

 the believer and the non-believer, for they are both the same;

 they think they are different but they are not for they both brainwash you, 

till you are of them, till you repeat their words, till you worship their saints,

 the ancient and the recent; they have armies for their gods 

and for their countries and they are experts in killing.

Keep far away but they are waiting for you, the educator and the businessman; 

one trains you for the others to conform to the demands of their society, 

which is a deadly thing.

They have a thing called society and family: these two are their real gods,

 the net in which you will be entangled.

They will make you into a scientist, into an engineer,

 into an expert of almost anything from cooking to architecture to philosophy.

Keep far, far away; they are waiting for you, the politician and the reformer;

 the one drags you down into the gutter and then the other reforms you; 

they juggle with words and you will be lost in their wilderness.

Keep far away; they are waiting for you, the experts in God and the bomb throwers: 

the one will convince you and the other show you how to kill;

 there are so many ways to find God and so many, many ways to kill.

But besides all these, there are hoards of others to tell you what to do 

and what not to do; keep away from all of them, 

so far away that you cannot find yourself or any other.

You too would like to play with all of them who are waiting for you 

but then the play becomes so complicated and entertaining that you will be lost.

You should never be here too much, 

be so far away that even you cannot find yourself.

They were all sitting in a row in the fairly well kept garden; 

they had on the light and they were eating and the big house was behind them. 

There was the scent of many flowers in the air and the breeze 

was coming from the restless sea. On that road there was hardly any car 

and your brain was utterly still and the movement of a flash was taking place. 

The meditation was the flash and that flash can only be in emptiness; 

the flash that opens the door into the unknown. 

That flash has no time but it’s only a fleeting second. 

You can never keep that flash any more than you can hold

the winds in your fists.




~ J. Krishnamurti
from his notebook

the voices

The rich and fortunate do well to keep silent,
for no one cares to know who and what they are.
But those in need must reveal themselves,
must say: I am blind,
or: I'm on the verge of going blind,
or: nothing goes well with me on earth,
or: I have a sickly child,
or: I have little to hold me together...

And chances are this is not nearly enough.

And because people try to ignore them as they
pass by them: these unfortunate ones have to sing!

And at times one hears some excellent singing!

Of course, people differ in their tastes: some would
prefer to listen to choirs of boy-castrati.

But God himself comes often and stays long,
when the castrati's singing disturbs Him.

~Rainer Maria Rilke

If you ask how much do I want

If you ask how much do I want,

I'll tell you that I want it all.

This morning, you and I

and all men

are flowing into the marvelous stream

of oneness.

Small pieces of imagination as we are.

we have come a long way to find ourselves

and for ourselves, in the dark, the illusion

of emancipation.

This morning, my brother is back from his

long adventure.

He kneels before the alter,

his eyes full of tears.

His soul is longing for a shore to set anchor at

(a yearning I once had).

Let him kneel there and weep.

Let him cry his heart out.

Let him have his refuge there for a thousand years,

enough to dry all his tears.

One night, I will come

and set fire to his shelter,

the small cottage on the hill.

My fire will destroy everything

and remove his only life raft after a shipwreck.

In the utmost anguish of his soul,

the shell will break.

The light of the burning hut will witness

his glorious deliverance.

I will wait for him

beside the burning cottage.

Tears will run down my cheeks.

I will be there to contemplate his new being.

And as I hold his hands in mine

and ask him how much he wants,

he will smile and say that he wants it all -

just as I did.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

.

all of a sudden

All my life perplexed by truth and falsity, right and wrong;

Now amusing myself in the moonlight,

Laughing at the wind,

Listening to the song of birds -

So many years spent idly contemplating

The immense white layer on the mountains;

This winter, all of a sudden,

I see it for the first time as a snow-mountain.

~ Dogen

from The Zen Poetry of Dogen by Steven Heine

on a day when the wind is perfect

On a day

when the wind is perfect,

the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty.

Today is such a 

day.

My eyes are like the sun that makes promises;

the promise of life

that it always

keeps

each morning.

The living heart gives to us as does that luminous sphere,

both caress the earth with great

tenderness.

This is a breeze that can enter the soul.

This love I know plays a drum. Arms move around me;

who can contain their self before my beauty?

Peace is wonderful,

but ecstatic dance is more fun, and less narcissistic;

gregarious He makes our lips.

On a day when the wind is perfect,

the sail just needs to open

and the love starts.

Today is such

a day.

~ Rumi

from Love Poems From God: 
Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West 

by Daniel Ladinsky

.

forgiving oneself

My brother used to ask the birds to forgive him; 

that sounds senseless but it is right; 

for all is like the ocean, all things flow and touch each other;

 a disturbance in one place is felt at the other end of the world. 

—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
from The Brothers Karamazov

art by Shiko Munakata

 

 

 

 

 

why does not the church tell you?

At last the time came for the bride

to be with Him.

Nothing all the other brides had ever known 

could have prepared me.

Only the beauty and light you cannot describe

has a place in His house.

I can touch God - yes - but not with anything I own,

not with anything I can identify with,

not with anything that

knows 

me.

Purity, have you ever contemplated that word?

I once beheld the root of the Immaculate

and it drew me into itself.

I looked at all through

His eyes.

Why does not my sacred church tell you:

God only sees

Himself.

~ St. John of the Cross

 from Love Poems from God

by Daniel Ladinsky

streaming

When the path ignites a soul,

there's no remaining in place.

The foot touches ground,

but not for long.

The way where love tells its secret

stays always in motion,

and there is no you there, and no reason.

The rider urges his horse to gallop,

and so doing, throws himself

under the flying hooves.

In love-unity there's no old or new.

Everything is nothing.

God alone is.

For lovers the phenomena-veil is very transparent,

and the delicate tracings on it cannot

be explained with language.

Clouds burn off as the sun rises,

and the love-world floods with light.

But cloud-water can be obscuring,

as well as useful.

There is an affection that covers the glory,

rather than dissolving into it.

It's a subtle difference,

like the change in Persian

from the word "friendship"

to the word "work."

That happens with just a dot

above or below the third letter.

There is a seeing of the beauty

of union that doesn't actively work

for the inner conversation.

Your hand and feet must move,

as a stream streams, working

as its Self, to get to the ocean.

Then there's no more mention

of the search.

Being famous, or being a disgrace,

who's ahead or behind, these considerations

are rocks and clogged places

that slow you. Be as naked as a wheat grain

out of its husk and sleek as Adam.

Don't ask for anything other

than the presence.

Don't speak of a "you"

apart from That.

A full container cannot be more full.

Be whole, and nothing.

~ Hakim Sanai

version by Coleman Barks

from  The Hand of Poetry: Five Mystic Poets of Persia, 

with Lectures by Inayat Khan

the "goal?"

The traveler who finds his road blocked by a river will use a raft to reach the opposite shore, but, this shore once reached, he will not carry the raft on his shoulders while continuing his journey.  He will abandon it as something which has become useless.

The raft represents the different kinds of methods, intellectual training or moral discipline, which are available as means to bring the seeker of liberation to the "other shore".  On this shore, both have lost their value; they bear no relation to the conditions existing on the "other shore" and, like the raft in the parable, they are only a useless burden.... 

"The country which is nowhere is the real home."

On the other hand, is there any traveler who makes a crossing?  

Is there a somebody who reaches the other shore?

If this was the case, this traveler would carry with him the "hither shore" into the "beyond", just as the dust on the soles of one's shoes is carried from one place to another.  The traveler would transform the "other bank" into "this bank" because here and there are in him, are him and that outside the mind which thinks "here" and "there" are no other "here" and "there".

To go beyond virtue and vice, opinions and beliefs is to go beyond the mental constructions which are built up by the mind, unceasingly, and to recognize, by transcendent insight, that they are void of reality.  It is also to recognize, by transcendent insight, that that which has been imagined as practicing virtue, surrendering to vice, as holding opinions and elaborating theories, as traveling towards a goal and reaching the goal, is nothing but an inconsistent phantom, devoid of reality. 

~ Alexandra David-Neel and Lama Yongden

from The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

 

come in, my self

A certain person came to the Friend’s door

and knocked.

“Who’s there?”

“It’s me.”

The Friend answered, “Go away. There’s no place

for raw meat at this table.”

The individual went wandering for a year.

Nothing but the fire of separation

can change hypocrisy and ego. The person returned

completely cooked,

walked up and down in front of the Friend’s house,

gently knocked.

“Who is it?”

“You.”

“Please come in, my self,

there’s no place in this house for two.

The doubled end of the thread is not what goes through

the eye of the needle.

It’s a single-pointed, fined-down, thread end,

not a big ego-beast with baggage."

~ Rumi

excerpt taken from Two Friends

translation by coleman barks

the solitude of the other

 art by Ralf Winkler

I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: 

that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.

 For, if it lies in the nature of indifference and of the crowd to recognize no solitude,

 then love and friendship are there for the purpose of continually providing

 the opportunity for solitude. And only those are the true sharings

 which rhythmically interrupt periods of deep isolation...

All companionship can consist only in the strengthening of two neighboring solitudes,

 whereas everything that one is wont to call giving oneself is by nature 

harmful to companionship: for when a person abandons himself, 

he is no longer anything, and when two people both give themselves up

 in order to come close to each other, there is no longer

 any ground beneath them...

once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings

 infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up,

 if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible

 for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky!


~ Rainer Maria Rilke
from Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties:
 Translations and Considerations

Let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not

 in each other’s shadow.

 ~ Kahlil Gibran

from The Prophet
 

 art by Odilon Redon

the inner work

The outward work will never be puny if the inward work is great.

 And the outward work can never be great or even good if the onward one is puny

 or of little worth. The inward work invariably includes in itself all expansiveness,

 all breadth, all length, all depth.

 Such a work receives and draws all its being from nowhere 

else except from and in the heart of God.

If that which you seek cannot be found within you, 

you will never find it outside of you.

~ Meister Eckhart
Dominican Theologian and Christian Mystic, 14th Century

human desire

Human desire differs from animal desire in that it is at root insatiable. 
Man is characterized by a hunger for the infinite, for an eternity of life, 
love and joy which, whether he knows it or not, can be nothing other than God.
 Assuming that God exists, it will follow that God is man's true end,
 for the appetite of a living organism shows its function. 

The stomach hungers for food because it's function is to digest food. 
As physical taste and hunger may often be mistaken as to their true object, 
desiring nothing but caviar instead of a balanced diet, 
man is often mistaken as to the goal of his life, desiring wealth,
 power or physical pleasure instead of God. But his real appetite
 continues to be God, for which these lesser goals are always
 unsatisfactory substitutes. 

Those who set their hearts on finite goals are always discontented; 
they must always have more and more and more of what they desire, 
and failing this are frustrated and miserable. Profound contentment
 is only enjoyed by animals and primitives, in which infinite hunger
 has not been awakened, and by the saints and mystics 
who have realized union with God.


- Alan Watts

from Behold the Spirit: A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion

on giving

You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
For what are your possessions but things you keep and guard for fear you may need them tomorrow?
And tomorrow, what shall tomorrow bring to the over-prudent dog burying bones in the trackless sand as he follows the pilgrims to the holy city?
And what is fear of need but need itself?
Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, the thirst that is unquenchable?

There are those who give little of the much which they have--and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.
And there are those who have little and give it all.
These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty.
There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.
And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism.
And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue;
They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.
Through the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind their eyes He smiles upon the earth.

It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding;
And to the open-handed the search for one who shall receive is joy greater than giving.
And is there aught you would withhold?
All you have shall some day be given;
Therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors'.

You often say, "I would give, but only to the deserving."
The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture.
They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.
Surely he who is worthy to receive his days and his nights, is worthy of all else from you.
And he who has deserved to drink from the ocean of life deserves to fill his cup from your little stream.
And what desert greater shall there be, than that which lies in the courage and the confidence, nay the charity, of receiving?
And who are you that men should rend their bosom and unveil their pride, that you may see their worth naked and their pride unabashed?
See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an instrument of giving.
For in truth it is life that gives unto life while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.

And you receivers... and you are all receivers... assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives.
Rather rise together with the giver on his gifts as on wings;
For to be overmindful of your debt, is to doubt his generosity who has the freehearted earth for mother, and God for father.

~ Kahlil Gibran

merton: on war and fear

.

.

The present war crisis is something we have made entirely for and by ourselves. There is in reality not the slightest logical reason for war, and yet the whole world is plunging headlong into frightful destruction, and doing so with the purpose of avoiding war and preserving peace! This is a true war-madness, an illness of the mind and the spirit that is spreading With a furious and subtle contagion all over the world. Of all the countries that are sick, America is perhaps the most grievously afflicted. This is a nation that claims to be fighting for religious truth along with freedom and other values of the spirit. 

What are we to do?  That task is to work for the total abolition of war. There can be no question that unless war is abolished the world will remain constantly in a state of madness and desperation in which, because of the immense destructive power of modern weapons, the danger of catastrophe will be imminent and probably at every moment everywhere. We may never succeed in this campaign but whether we succeed or not the duty is evident. It is the great task of our time. Everything else is secondary, for the survival of the human race itself depends on it. We must at least face this responsibility and do something about it. And the first job of an is to understand the psychological forces at work in ourselves and in society.

At the root of all war is fear, not so much the fear men have of one another as the fear they have of everything. It is not merely that they do not trust one another. They do not even trust themselves.... They cannot trust anything because they have ceased to know  God.

It is not only our hatred of others that is dangerous but also and above an our hatred of ourselves: particularly that hatred of ourselves which is too deep and too powerful to be consciously faced. For it is this that makes us see our own evil in others and unable to see it in ourselves....

As if this were not enough, we make the situation much worse by artificially intensifying our sense of evil, and by increasing our propensity to feel guilt even for things that are not in themselves wrong. In all these ways, we build up such an obsession with evil, both in ourselves and in others, that we waste all our mental energy trying to account for this evil, to punish it, to exorcise it, or to get rid of it in any way we can.

We drive ourselves mad with our preoccupation and in the end there is no outlet left but violence. We have to destroy something or someone. By that time, we have created for ourselves a suitable enemy, a scapegoat in whom we have invested all the evil in the world. He is the cause of every wrong. He is the fomenter of an conflict. If he can only be destroyed, conflict will cease, evil will be done with, there will be no more war....

In our refusal to accept the partially good intentions of others and work with them (of course prudently and with resignation to the inevitable imperfection of the result) we are unconsciously proclaiming our own malice, our own intolerance, our own lack of realism, our own ethical and political quackery.

Perhaps in the end the first real step toward peace would be a realistic acceptance of the fact that our political deals are perhaps to a great extent illusions and fictions to which we cling, out of motives that are not always perfectly honest: that because of this we prevent ourselves from seeing any good or any practicability in the political ideas of our enemies--which may of course be in many ways even more illusory and dishonest than our own. We will never get anywhere unless we can accept the fact that politics is an inextricable tangle of good and evil motives in which, perhaps, the evil predominate but where one must continue to hope doggedly in what little good can still be found....

I believe the basis for valid political action can only be the recognition that the true solution to our problems is not accessible to any one isolated party or nation but that all must arrive at it by working together....

We must try to accept ourselves whether individually or collectively, not only as perfectly good or perfectly bad, but in our mysterious, unaccountable mixture of good and evil. We have to stand by the modicum of good that is in us without exaggerating it. We have to defend our real rights, because unless we respect our own rights we will certainly not respect the rights of others. But at the same time we have to recognize that we have willfully or otherwise trespassed on the rights of others. We must be able to admit this not only as the result of self-examination, but when it is pointed out unexpectedly, and perhaps not too gently, by somebody else.

These principles that govern personal moral conduct, that make harmony possible in small social units like the family, also apply in the wider areas of the state and in the whole community of nations. It is however quite absurd, in our present situation or in any other, to expect these principles to be universally accepted as the result of moral exhortations. There is very little hope that the world will be run according to them all of a sudden, as a result of some hypothetical change of heart on the part of politicians. It is useless and even laughable to base political thought on the faint hope of a purely contingent and subjective moral illumination in the hearts of the world's leaders. But outside of political thought and action, in the religious sphere, it is not only permissible to hope for such a mysterious consummation, but it is necessary to pray for it. We can and must believe not so much that the mysterious light of God can "convert" the ones who are mostly responsible for the world's peace, but at least that they may, in spite of their obstinacy and their prejudices, be guarded against fatal error....

For only love--which means humility--can exorcise the fear that is at the root of all war .

What is the use of postmarking our mail with the exhortation to 'pray for peace' and then spending billions of dollars on atomic submarines, thermonuclear weapons, and ballistic missiles? This, I would think, would certainly be what the New Testament calls 'mocking God' - and mocking Him far more effectively than what the atheists do. The culminating horror of the joke is that we are piling up these weapons to protect ourselves against atheists, who, quite frankly, believe there is no God and are convinced that one has to rely on bombs and missiles since nothing else offers any real security. Is it then, because we have so much trust in the power of God that we are intent upon utterly destroying these people before they can destroy us? Even at the risk of destroying ourselves at the same time?

If men really wanted peace they would sincerely ask God for it and He would give it to them. But why should He give the world a peace it does not really desire? The peace the world pretends to desire is really no peace at all.

To some men peace merely means the liberty to exploit other people without fear of retaliation or interference. To others peace means the freedom to rob brothers without interruption. To still others it means the leisure to devour the goods of the earth without being compelled to interrupt their pleasures to feed those whom their greed is starving. And to practically everybody, peace simply means the absence of any physical violence that might cast a shadow over lives devoted to the satisfaction of their animal appetites for comfort and pleasure.

Many men like these have asked God for what they thought was "peace" and wondered why their prayer was not answered. They could not understand that it actually was answered. God left them with what they desired, for their idea of peace was only another form of war....

So instead of loving what you think is peace, love other men and love God above all. And instead of hating the people you think are warmongers, hate the appetites and the disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed--but hate these things in yourself not in another.

.

~ Thomas Merton

excerpt from his 1962 essay: The Root of War is Fear