lute music

Let us celebrate. The Earth will be going on a long time
Before it finally freezes;
Men will be on it; they will take names,
Give their deeds reasons.
We will be here only
As chemical constituents—
A small franchise indeed.

Right now we have lives,
Corpuscles, Ambitions, Caresses,
Like everybody had once—
Here at the year's end, at the feast
Of birth, let us bring to each other
The gifts brought once west through deserts—
The precious metal of our mingled hair,
The frankincense of enraptured arms and legs,
The myrrh of desperate, invincible kisses—

Let us celebrate the daily
Recurrent nativity of love,
The endless epiphany of our fluent selves,
While the earth rolls away under us
Into unknown snows and summers,
Into untraveled spaces of the stars.

—Kenneth Rexroth

 from The Phoenix and the Tortoise

 

 

in a mystery to be

in time of daffodils(who know

the goal of living is to grow)

forgetting why,remembering how

in time of lilacs who proclaim

the aim of walking is to dream

remembering so(forgetting seem)

in time of roses(who amaze

our now and here with paradise)

forgetting if,remembering yes

in time of all sweet things beyond

whatever mind may comprehend,

remember seek(forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be

(when time from time shall set us free)

forgetting me, remember me

~ e. e. Cummings

from Selected Poems

for Ram Dass

Imagine the time the particle you are

returns where it came from!

The family darling comes home.   Wine

without being contained in cups,

is handed around.

A red glint appears in a granite outcrop,

and suddenly the whole cliff turns to ruby.

~ Rumi

 

Ram Dass, beloved spiritual teacher, psychedelic pioneer and perhaps one of the greatest cultural creative of our generation, whose book Be Here Now kindled the consciousness revolution of the sixties and launched the mindfulness movement, died this week. His passing illuminated the Facebook feeds across our community with touching personal tributes and reflections on his contribution to the shape of consciousness on this planet. One couldn’t help but feel how deeply his teachings entangled a mandala of hearts the world over. His legacy was one of Love.

"Unconditional love really exists in each of us. It is part of our deep inner being. It is not so much an active emotion as a state of being. It's not 'I love you' for this or that reason, not 'I love you if you love me.' It's love for no reason, love without an object."

awaken to the mystery of being here

May you awaken to the mystery of being here and enter

the quiet immensity of your own presence.

May you have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.

May you receive great encouragement when new frontiers

beckon.

May you respond to the call of your gift and find the

courage to follow its path.

May the flame of anger free you from falsity.

May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame and may

anxiety never linger about you.

May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul.

May you take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that

seek no attention.

May you be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.

May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven

around the heart of wonder.

~ John O'Donohue

a gift

The gift of God is absolutely gratuitous.  It's not something you earn. It's something that's there. It's something you just have to accept. This is the gift that has been given. There's no place to go to get it. There's no place you can go to avoid it. It just is. It's part of our very existence. And so the purpose of all the great religions is to bring us into this relationship with reality that is so intimate that no words can possibly describe it.

~ Thomas Keating

simple seeing

~ Joan Tollifson

you bind yourself though you use no rope

What is the master [within you] who at this very moment is seeing and hearing?
 If you reply, as most do, that it is Mind or Nature or Buddha
 or one's Face before birth or one's Original Home or Koan or Being
 or Nothingness or Emptiness or Form-and-Color or the Known
 or the Unknown or Truth or Delusion, or say something
 or remain silent, or regard it as Enlightenment or Ignorance,
 you fall into error at once. What is more, if you are so foolhardy
 as to doubt the reality of this master, you bind yourself though you use no rope.

 However much you try to know it through logical reasoning or to name
 or call it, you are doomed to failure. And even though all of you becomes
 one mass of questioning as you turn inward and intently search
 the very core of your being, you will find nothing that can be termed
 Mind or Essence. Yet should someone call your name, something from 
within will hear and respond. Find out this instant who it is!

If you push forward with your last ounce of strength at the very point
 where the path of your thinking has been blocked, and then, 
completely stymied, leap with hands high in the air into the tremendous abyss
 of fire confronting you -- into the ever-burning flame of your own
 primordial nature -- all ego-consciousness, all delusive feelings
 and thoughts and perceptions will perish with your ego-root 
and the true source of your Self-nature will appear. You will feel resurrected,
 all sickness having completely vanished,
 and will experience genuine peace and joy.

~ Bassui
1327–1387

a Rinzai Zen Master born in modern-day Kanagawa Prefecture who had trained with Sōtō, Rinzai and Ch'an masters of his time. Bassui was unhappy with the state of Zen practice in Japan during his time, so he set out in life with the mission of revitalizing it. The problems he saw were really two sides of the same coin. That is, he saw both too much attachment by some monks and masters to ritual and dogma as well as too much attachment by some monks and masters to freedom and informality. 

between human beings

Harlan disliked handling money because of its abstractness and impersonality;

 for he did not enjoy either paying it or receiving it in payment. 

He felt a social embarrassment in monetary transactions that country people

 still feel, as if money is simply too crude a means of exchange 

between human beings.



~ Wendell Berry
from Harlan Hubbard: Life and Work

a different self

... I myself I require a more direct revelation, 

not one that must come through so many minds before it reaches mine.  

I must have a faith that I can see and hear, 

one that I can feel without thinking or even trying to put it into words.  

It is not for anyone else, 

it is a personal faith.

The interval of solitude is precious.  

It is a different world and I am a different self.  

I feel relieved of a responsibility that cannot be defined.  

I am released from pressure, my mind is free.  

Yet would I not feel a lack of balance if I lived alone all the time?

~ Harlan Hubbard
from his journal, 1959

emptied of all things

For He is the Very Rest.

God wishes to be known, 

And it pleases Him that

We rest in Him;

For all that is beneath Him

Will never satisfy us.

Therefore no soul is rested

Til it is emptied of all things

That are made.

When, for love of Him, 

It is empty, 

The soul can

Receive His deep rest.

~ Julian of Norwich, (1342-c. 1423)

She may have joined a Benedictine community earlier, but then at the age of thirty she fell ill to the point of death and was given last rites. She then received a series of sixteen visions which were later described in her work entitled Showings, or Revelations of Divine Love in the first book known to have been written by a woman in English.  It exists in two versions, a short text of twenty-five chapters and a much longer text of eighty-six chapters.  The first thought to have been written immediately after the visions were received,  and the second after years of meditation on the meaning of these visions.

"Be still and know that I am God," so says the Psalmist (Psalm 46:10), yet the word rest adds a dimension of stillness.  It implies letting go of effort - even the effort to be internally still - and allowing oneself to be held by  that which can not be named or known.  When we do let go of all desires for this and that, when we are empty, we receive his deep rest.  

~ contributing to comments: Roger Housden and Ursula King

stillness - and our thinking mind

~ Richard Rohr

haunted pilgrims

Fashioned from clay, we carry the memory of the earth. Ancient, forgotten things stir within our hearts, memories from the time before the mind was born. Within us are depths that keep watch. These are depths that no words can trawl or light unriddle. Our neon times have neglected and evaded the depth-kingdoms of interiority in favor of the ghost realms of cyberspace. We have unlearned the patience and attention of lingering at the thresholds where the unknown awaits us. We have become haunted pilgrims addicted to distraction and driven by the speed and color of images.

~ John O'Donohue

from Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

the roof nail

A hundred boats are still looking for shore.

There is more in my hopes than I imagined.

The tiny roof nail lies on the ground, aching for the roof.

Some little bone in our foot is longing for heaven.

~ Robert Bly

from Talking into the Ear of a Donkey

art by picasso

plague of intolerance

A mass movement readily exploits the discontent and frustration
 of large segments of the population which for some reason or other
 cannot face the responsibility of being persons and standing
 on their own feet. But give these persons a movement to join, 
a cause to defend, and they will go to any extreme, stop at no crime, 
intoxicated as they are by the slogans that give them a pseudo-religious
 sense of transcending their own limitations. The member of a mass movement, 
afraid of his own isolation, and his own weakness as an individual,
 cannot face the task of discovering within himself the spiritual power 
and integrity which can be called forth only by love. Instead of this, 
he seeks a movement that will protect his weakness with a wall of anonymity
 and justify his acts by the sanction of collective glory and power.
 All the better if this is done out of hatred, for hatred is always easier 
and less subtle than love. It does not have to respect reality as love does.
It does not have to take account of individual cases. Its solutions are simple
 and easy. It makes its decisions by a simple glance at a face, a colored skin,
 a uniform. It identifies an enemy by an accent, an unfamiliar turn of speech,
 an appeal to concepts that are difficult to understand. 
He is something unfamiliar. This is not "ours." 
This must be brought into line - or destroyed.

Here is the great temptation of the modern age, this universal infection 
of fanaticism, this plague of intolerance, prejudice and hate
which flows from the crippled nature of man who is afraid of love
 and does not dare to be a person. It is against this temptation most of all
 that the Christian must labor with inexhaustible patience and love,
in silence, perhaps in repeated failure, seeking tirelessly to restore, 
wherever he can, and first of all in himself, the capacity of love 
and which makes man the living image of God.

~ Thomas Merton,

from Disputed Questions

reverence of approach

A reverence of approach awakens depth and enables us

 to be truly present where we are.  When we approach with reverence

 great things decide to approach us.  Our real life comes 

to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty in things.  

When we walk on the earth with reverence, 

beauty will decide to trust us.  The rushed heart and

 the arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience 

to enter that embrace. 

 Beauty is mysterious, a slow presence who waits for the ready,

 expectant heart.  When the heart becomes attuned to her 

restrained glimmerings, it learns to recognize her intimations

 more frequently in places it would never have lingered before.

~ John O'Donohue

from Beauty, The Invisible Embrace

art by Van Gogh