Tuesday, March 17, 2020

peace and the scary spider








~ Gangaji 


until we know everything






We know nothing until we know everything.

I have no object to defend
for all is of equal value
to me.

I cannot lose anything in this
place of abundance
I found.

If something my heart cherishes
is taken away,

I just say, "Lord, what happened?"

And a hundred more appear.



~ Saint Catherine of Siena, (1347-1380)

she felt the need to go out into the world and help her neighbors out of love for God.  Thus she was not only and ascetic and mystic, but also and activist...She devoted herself with such dedication to the sick and poor of Siena that they called her "our holy mother."

comment by Ursula King
art by Sano di Pietro




Monday, March 16, 2020

life's joys and sorrow









~ Jack Kornfield

 


Sunday, March 15, 2020

the Indian parrot







There was a merchant setting out for India. 

He asked each male and female servant
what they wanted to be brought as a gift. 

Each told him a different exotic object:
A piece of silk, a brass figurine,
a pearl necklace. 

Then he asked his beautiful caged parrot,
the one with such a lovely voice,
and she said,
"When you see the Indian parrots,
describe my cage. Say that I need guidance
here in my separation from them. Ask how
our friendship can continue with me so confined
and them flying about freely in the meadow mist. 

Tell them that I remember well our mornings
moving together from tree to tree. 

Tell them to drink one cup of ecstatic wine
in honor of me here in the dregs of my life. 

Tell them that the sound of their quarreling
high in the trees would be sweeter
to hear than any music." 

This parrot is the spirit-bird in all of us,
that part that wants to return to freedom,
and is the freedom. What she wants
from India is herself! 

So this parrot gave her message to the merchant,
and when he reached India, he saw a field
full of parrots. He stopped
and called out what she had told him. 

One of the nearest parrots shivered
and stiffened and fell down dead. 

The merchant said, "This one is surely kin
to my parrot. I shouldn't have spoken." 

He finished his trading and returned home
with the presents for his workers. 

When he got to the parrot, she demanded her gift.
"What happened when you told my story
to the Indian parrots?" 

"I'm afraid to say."
"Master, you must!" 

"When I spoke your complaint to the field
of chattering parrots, it broke
one of their hearts. 

She must have been  close companion,
or a relative, for when she heard about you
she grew quiet and trembled, and died." 

As the caged parrot heard this, she herself
quivered and sank to the cage floor. 

This merchant was a good man.
He grieved deeply for his parrot, murmuring
distracted phrases, self-contradictory -
cold, then loving - clear, then
murky with symbolism. 

A drowning man reaches for anything!
The Friend loves this flailing about
better than any lying still. 

The One who lives inside existence
stays constantly in motion,
and whatever you do, that king
watches through the window. 

When the merchant threw the "dead" parrot
out of the cage, it spread its wings
and glided to a nearby tree! 

The merchant suddenly understood the mystery.
"Sweet singer, what was in the message
that taught you this trick?" 

"She told me that it was the charm
of my voice that kept me caged.
Give it up, and be released!" 

The parrot told the merchant one or two more
spiritual truths. Then a tender goodbye. 

"God protect you," said the merchant
"as you go on your new way.
I hope to follow you!" 





~ Rumi 
from  One-Handed Basket Weaving
translated by Coleman Barks


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Saturday, March 14, 2020

vulnerability - Brene Brown










~ Brene Brown




vulnerability








Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition 
or something we can arrange to do without, vulnerability is not a choice,
 vulnerability is the underlying, ever present and abiding undercurrent
 of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence
 of our nature, the attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt
 to become something we are not and most especially, to close off 
our understanding of the grief of others. More seriously,
 in refusing our vulnerability we refuse the help needed at every turn 
of our existence and immobilize the essential, tidal and conversational
 foundations of our identity.

To have a temporary, isolated sense of power over all events 
and circumstances, is a lovely illusionary privilege and perhaps 
the prime and most beautifully constructed conceit of being human 
and especially of being youthfully human, but it is a privilege
 that must be surrendered with that same youth, with ill health, 
with accident, with the loss of loved ones who do not share 
our untouchable powers; powers eventually and most emphatically
 given up, as we approach our last breath.

The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability,
 how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate 
through our intimacy with disappearance, our choice is to inhabit vulnerability
 as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, 
as misers and complainers, reluctant and fearful, always at the gates 
of existence, but never bravely and completely attempting to enter,
 never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door.





~ David Whyte
from Consolations:The Solace, Nourishment and 

Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words
 

Thursday, March 12, 2020

the peace of wild things







When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.





~ Wendell Berry




perspectives on compassion - Dayanada Sarawati









~ Dayananda Saraswati



 

perspectives on compassion - Joan Halifax









~ Joan Halifax



 

perspectives on compassion - James Forbes









~ James Forbes



 

perspectives on compassion - Robert Thurman









~ Robert Thurman


 

perspectives on compassion - Robert Wright









~ Robert Wright


 

Wednesday, March 11, 2020

impermanence







~ Jack Kornfield



 

Tuesday, March 10, 2020

sit down



.

.


Once, there was a fellow who wanted out of the Zen monastery where he was living.
In Zen monasteries you must pay constant attention to what you’re doing,
 what you’re experiencing from moment to moment. After a time, this can get to you,
 which is precisely what happened to this fellow.

He went to see the master and said,
 “I can’t take this anymore. I want out.”

The master said,
 “Okay, then leave.”

He started for the door, and the master said,
 “That’s not your door.”

“Oh. Sorry.” The fellow looked around and spotted another door.
 As he headed for it, the master said,
 “That’s not your door.”

“Oh!” He looked around for another door, and as he headed for that one,
 the master said,
“That’s not your door!”

Bewildered and exasperated, the poor fellow said, “What do you mean?
 There’s no other door. You told me I could leave, but there’s no door I can leave by.”

“If there’s no door you can leave by,”
 said the master,
 “then sit down.”

We can only be here. We can’t leave. We’re always here.
 Examine your life and you’ll see. The master’s
“sit down”
 means to start paying attention to what’s actually going on,
 instead of running away from it. This is how it is with us.
 Because we ignore our true situation, we’re never satisfied.



~ Steve Hagen





images




.

. . . it is important to understand, not intellectually but actually in your daily life,
 how you have built images about your wife, your husband, your neighbor, 
your child, your country, your leaders, your politicians, your gods
–you have nothing but images.

The images create the space between you and what you observe and in that space
 there is conflict, so what we are going to find out now together is whether
 it is possible to be free of the space we create, not only outside ourselves 
but in ourselves, the space which divides people
 in all their relationships.

Now the very attention you give to a problem is the energy that solves that problem. 
When you give your complete attention–I mean with everything in you–
there is no observer at all. There is only the state of attention which is total energy, 
and that total energy is the highest form of intelligence. Naturally that state
 of mind must be completely silent and that silence, that stillness,
 comes when there is total attention, not disciplined stillness. 
That total silence in which there is neither the observer nor the thing observed
 is the highest form of a religious mind. But what takes place in that state
 cannot be put into words because what is said in words is not the fact.
 To find out for yourself you have to go through it.



~ J. Krishnamurti 
excerpt from Freedom from the Known
art by Georges Braque