Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Sky: An Assay




A hawk flies though it, carrying
a still-twisting snake twice the length of its body.

Radiation, smoke, mosquitoes, the music of Mahler fly through it.

The sky makes room, adjusting its airy shoulders.

Sky doesn't age or remember,
carries neither grudges nor hope.
Every morning is new as the last one, uncreased
as the not quite imaginable first.

From the fate of thunderstorms, hailstorms, fog,
sky learns no lesson,
leaping through any window as soon as it's raised.

In speech, furious or tender,
it's still of passing sky the words are formed.
Whatever sky proposes is out in the open.

Clear even when not,
sky offers no model, no mirror - cloudy or bright -
to the ordinary heart: which is secretive,
rackety, domestic, harboring a wild uninterest in sky's disinterest.

And so we look right past sky, by it, through it,
to what also is moody and alters -
erosive mountains, eclipsable moons, stars distant but death-bound.




~ Jane Hirshfield



Monday, March 30, 2020

expioring the shadow









~ Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman



between the shadow and the soul








I do not love you as if you were the salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way 


than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.



~ Pablo Neruda 
 art by Odilon Redon, Golden Cell



hands and shadows







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




Sunday, March 29, 2020

transforming darkness










~ Jack Kornfield


 

Friday, March 27, 2020

aloneness








But loneliness is entirely different from aloneness. That loneliness must be passed to be alone. Loneliness is not comparable with aloneness. The man who knows loneliness can never know that which is alone. Are you in that state of aloneness? Our minds are not integrated to be alone. The very process of the mind is separative. And that which separates knows loneliness.

But aloneness is not separative. It is something which is not the many, which is not influenced by the many, which is not the result of the many, which is not put together as the mind is; the mind is of the many. Mind is not an entity that is alone, being put together, brought together, manufactured through centuries. Mind can never be alone. Mind can never know aloneness. But being aware of the loneliness when going through it, there comes into being that aloneness. Then only can there be that which is immeasurable. Unfortunately most of us seek dependence. We want companions; we want friends; we want to live in a state of separation, in a state which brings about conflict. That which is alone can never be in a state of conflict. But mind can never perceive that, can never understand that; it can only know loneliness.





~ J. Krishnamurti
from the talk On Love and Loneliness (1952)
national geographic photo





all these insane borders we protect





A woman's body, like the earth, has seasons;
when the mountain stream flows,
when the holy thaws,
when I am most fragile and in need,
it was then, it seemed,
God came closest.

God, like a medic on a field, is tending our souls.
Our horns get locked with desires, but don't hold yourself
too accountable; for all desires are really innocent. 
That is what the compassion in His eyes tell me.

Why this great war between the countries -- the countries --
inside of us?

What are all these insane borders we protect?
What are all these different names for the same church of love
we kneel in together? For it is true, together we live; and only
at that shrine where all are welcome will God sing
loud enough to be heard.

Our horns got locked with the earth and sky in some odd
marriage ritual; so what, don't worry. We should be proud of
ourselves for everything we helped create in this
magic world.

And God is always there, if you feel wounded. He kneels
over this earth like a divine medic,
and His love thaws the holy in us.





~ St. Teresa of Avila
from Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West
version by Daniel Ladinsky
art by Steve Shinn








together in a tapestry








We are all bound together in a tapestry that like the sea gives the impression of movement 

towards something but is actually just a maternal body of material...

The flowers buzz when the vibration of the bees stimulates their pistons 

and their molecules swell and their petals hum like cellos. Rocks are alive,
 the firstborn of the natural world, somber without will.

There is no freedom from this universe we were born into, because it is our

 vague source of sensation, our soul, the container of our guilt.

Skins liquefy in heat. And when a bald baby swallow dies on your palm, 

you feel warmth pouring over your skin, a kind of burning fountain 
that scalds you like pepper spray.

Do you think this is a sign of the spirit ripping its energy into you to carry

 to the other side? I do. There are no actual objects over there, no materials
 but unformed steaming clouds, colors that harmonize musically, 
no gravity exists but elasticity composed of invisible images.

 

~ Fanny Howe
from 'The Child's Child'
The Needle's Eye: Passing through Youth




Monday, March 23, 2020

a hand is shaped for what it holds or makes





.
A hand is shaped for what it holds or makes.
Time takes what's handed to it then - warm bread, a stone,
a child whose fingers touch the page to keep her place.

Beloved, grown old separately, your face
shows me the changes on my own.
I see the histories it holds, the argument it makes

against the thresh of trees, the racing clouds, the race
of birds and sky birds always lose:
the lines have ranged, but not the cheek's strong bone.
My finger touching there recall that place.

Once we were one.  Then what time did, and hands, erased
us from the future we had owned.
For some, the future holds what hands release, not made.

We make a bridge.  We walked it.  Laced
night's sounds with passion.
Owls' pennywhistles, after, took our place.

Wasps leave their nest. Wind takes the papery case.
Our wooden house, less easily undone,
now houses others.  A life is shaped by what it holds or makes.
I make these words for what they can't replace.






~ Jane Hirshfield
from Come, Thief



we victims - our suffering










~ Gangaji



Sunday, March 22, 2020

change









~ Jack Kornfield



 

an old story









with thanks to brainpickings



Thursday, March 19, 2020

no ground to stand on










~ Ram Dass



 

the third body








A man and a woman sit near each other, and they do not long
at this moment to be older, or younger, nor born
in any other nation, or time, or place.
They are content to be where they are, talking or not talking.
Their breaths together feed someone whom we do not know.
The man sees the way his fingers move;
he sees her hands close around a book she hands to him.
They obey a third body they have in common.
They have made a promise to love that body.
Age may come, parting may come, death will come.
A man and woman sit near each other;
as they breathe they feed someone we do not know, 
someone we know of, whom we have never seen.



~ Robert Bly
art by  Ismail Shammout

Tuesday, March 17, 2020

peace and the scary spider








~ Gangaji