patterns

At the age of twenty-nine Gautama slipped away from his palace 
in the middle of the night, leaving behind his family and possessions. 
He traveled as a homeless vagabond throughout northern India, searching
 for a way out of suffering.


 He visited ashrams and sat at the feet of gurus
 but nothing liberated him entirely - some dissatisfaction always remained. 

He did not despair. He resolved to investigate suffering on his own
 until he found a method for complete liberation. He spent six years
 meditating on the essence, causes and cures for human anguish.


 In the end he came to the realization that suffering is not caused
 by ill fortune, by social injustice, or by divine whims. 
Rather, suffering is caused by the behavior patterns
 of one's own mind.

 

 Gautama's insight was that no matter what the mind experiences, 
it usually reacts with craving, and craving always
 involves dissatisfaction. When the mind experiences something
 distasteful it craves to be rid of the irritation.


 When the mind experiences something pleasant,
 it craves that the pleasure will remain and will intensify.
 Therefore, the mind is always 
dissatisfied and restless. 

This is very clear when we experience unpleasant things,
 such as pain. As long as the pain continues, we are dissatisfied 
and do all we can to avoid it. Yet even when we experience pleasant
 things we are never content. We either fear that the pleasure
 might disappear, or we hope that it will intensify. 

People dream for years about finding love but are rarely satisfied 
when they find it. Some become anxious that their partner will leave; 
others feel that they have settled cheaply, and could have found 
someone better. And we all know people who manage to do both.

  ~ Yuval Noah Harari

the wounded gift

One of the great powers of love is balance;
 it helps us move toward transfiguration.  

When two people come together, an ancient circle closes between them. 
They also come to each other not with empty hands,
 but with hands full of gifts for each other. 
Often these are wounded gifts; 

this awakens the dimension of healing within love. 
When you really love someone,
you shine the light of your soul on the beloved.  

We know from nature that sunlight brings everything to growth. 
 It you look at flowers early on a spring morning,
they are all closed.  

When the light of the sun catches them,
they trustingly open out and give themselves to the new light.

~ John O'Donohue

.

what keeps us alive

What keeps us alive, what allows us to endure?

I think it is the hope of loving,

or being loved.

I heard a fable once about the sun going on a journey 

to find its source, and how the moon wept

without her lover's 

warm gaze.

We weep when light does not reach our hearts, We wither

like fields if someone close

does not rain their

kindness

upon 

us.

~  Meister Eckhart

creating enmity

.

Surely that thing which you fight you become. If I am angry 
and you meet me with anger what is the result? 
More anger. You have become that which I am.
 If I am evil and you fight me with evil means then you also become evil,
 however righteous you may feel. If I am brutal and you use brutal methods 
to overcome me, then you become brutal like me. 

And this we have done for thousands of years. 
Surely there is a different approach than to meet hate by hate.
 If I use violent methods to quell anger in myself then
 I am using wrong means for a right end, 
and thereby the right end ceases to be. In this there is no understanding;
 there is no transcending anger. Anger is to be studied tolerantly
 and understood; it is not to be overcome through violent means.
 Anger may be the result of many causes and without comprehending
 them there is no escape from anger.

We have created the enemy, the bandit, and becoming ourselves the enemy
 in no way brings about an end to enmity. We have to understand the cause
 of enmity and cease to feed it by our thought, feeling, and action. 

This is an arduous task demanding constant self-awareness and intelligent pliability, 
for what we are the society, the state is. The enemy and the friend 
are the outcome of our thought and action. We are responsible for creating enmity 
and so it is more important to be aware of our own thought and action
 than to be concerned with the foe and the friend, for right thinking 
puts an end to division. Love transcends the friend and the enemy.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from The Book of Life

art by Picasso

division and separateness

Steve Biko


Tall order: We’re asked to enter into this volatile environment

 of division and separateness, but with as much consciousness

 of unity as possible. 

 

So King sets out for Selma. Gandhi begins the Salt March,

 or any number of us join movements for peace and justice.

 Seeking to recruit others, experiencing divisions among ourselves,

 confronting opposing power, wrestling with fear and anger,

 trying to keep a clear sense of our goals…

there are plenty of places to get lost in the struggle.

We need all the clarity and inspiration we can get in order not to violate, 

in our own behavior, the very principles and ideals we’re fighting for.

 

 

 

~ Ram Dass

 

 

 

 

where you are at home

The world of the past has gone...
 Behold I am making all of creation new.

(Book of Revelations)

The new day deepens what has already happened and unfolds what is surprising,
 unpredictable, and creative... Presence is the way a person's individuality
 comes toward you.  Presence is the soul texture of the person... 
If your soul is awakened, then you realize that this is the house of your real belonging. 
 Your longing is safe there.  Belonging is related to longing. 
 If you hyphenate belonging, it yields a lovely axiom for spiritual growth: 
 Be - Your - Longing.  Longing is a precious instinct in the soul. 
Where you belong should always be worthy of your dignity.
 You should belong first in your own interiority.  If you belong there, 
and if you are in rhythm with yourself and connected to that deep, 
unique source within, then you will never be vulnerable
 when your outside belonging is qualified, relativized, or taken away. 
 You will still be able to stand on your own ground, the ground of your soul, 
where you are not a tenant, 
where you are at home.

~ John O'Donohue

from Anam Cara

two sorts of loneliness

I know of two sorts of loneliness.  One makes me feel dreadfully unhappy, lost and forlorn, the other makes me feel strong and happy.  The first always appears when I feel our of touch with my fellow men, with everything, when I am completely cut off from others and from myself and can see no purpose in life or any connection between things, nor have the slightest idea where I fit in.  

Withe the other kind of loneliness, by contrast, I feel very strong and certain and connected with everyone and everything and with God, and realize that I can manage on my own and that I am not dependent upon others.  Then I know that I am part of a meaningful whole and that I can impart a great deal of strength to others.

~ Etty Hillesum

from Etty Hillesum - Essential Writings 

chivalrous play

It comes, then, to this: that to be "viable", livable, or merely practical,

 life must be lived as a game - 

and the "must" here expresses a condition, not a commandment. 

It must be lived in the spirit of play rather than work, 

and the conflicts which it involves must be carried on in the realization that no species, 

or party to a game, can survive without its natural antagonists, 

its beloved enemies, its indispensable opponents. 

For to "love your enemies" is to love them as enemies; 

it is not necessarily a clever device for winning them over to your side. 

The lion lies down with the lamb in paradise, but not on earth - 

"paradise" being the tacit, off-stage level where, behind the scenes, 

all conflicting parties recognize their interdependence, 

and, through this recognition, are able to keep their conflicts within bounds. 

This recognition is the absolutely essential chivalry 

which must set the limits within all warfare, 

with human and non-human enemies alike, 

for chivalry is the debonair spirit of the knight

 who "plays with his life" 

in the knowledge that even mortal combat is a game.

No one who has been hoaxed into the belief that he is nothing but his ego, 

or nothing but his individual organism, can be chivalrous, 

let alone a civilized, sensitive, and intelligent member of the cosmos.

~ Alan Watts

from The Book on The Taboo 

Against Knowing Who You Are

the runaway

The Place where you are right now

God circled on a map for you.

~ Hafiz

The poet tells you

god has put a circle around you on a map

to locate you in sacred space.

Then why do you keep tunneling

underground,

carving labyrinths for your escape?

~ Dorothy Walters

from Marrow of Flame

art by Picasso

late prayer

Tenderness does not choose its own uses.

It goes out to everything equally,

circling rabbit and hawk.

Look: in the iron bucket,

a single nail, a single ruby -

all the heavens and hells.

They rattle in the heart and make one sound.

~  Jane Hirshfield 

from The Lives of the Heart

the ancient radiance of others

In your clay body, things are coming to expression and to light
 that were never known before, presences that never came to light or shape
 in any other individual.  To paraphrase Heidegger, who said,
 "Man is a shepherd of being,"  we could say,  "Man is a shepherd of clay." 
 You represent an unknown world that begs you to bring it to voice.  

Often the joy you feel does not belong to your individual biography 
but to the clay out of which you are formed.  At other times, 
you will find sorrow moving through you, like a dark mist over a landscape.
  This sorrow is dark enough to paralyze you.  It is a mistake to interfere 
with this movement of feeling.  It is more appropriate to recognize
 that this emotion belongs more to your clay than to your mind.  
It is wise to let this weather of feeling pass;  it is on its way elsewhere.  
We so easily forget that our clay has a memory that preceded our minds, 
a life of its own before it took its present form.   

Regardless of how modern we seem, we still remain ancient, 
sister and brothers of the one clay.  In each of us a different part of the mystery
 becomes luminous.  To truly be and become yourself, 
you need the ancient radiance of others.

~ John O'Donohue

from Anam Cara

the immense expanse beyond

The search for reason ends at the known; on the immense expanse beyond
 it only the sense of the ineffable can glide. It alone knows the route
 to that which is remote from experience and understanding.
 Neither of them is amphibious: reason cannot go beyond the shore, 
and the sense of the ineffable is out of place where we measure, 
where we weigh. We do not leave the shore of the known
 in search of adventure or suspense or because of the failure of reason
 to answer our questions. We sail because our mind is like a fantastic seashell,
 and when applying our ear to its lips we hear a perpetual murmur
 from the waves beyond the shore. Citizens of two realms, 
we all must sustain a dual allegiance: we sense the ineffable in one realm, 
we name and exploit reality in another. Between the two we set up a system
 of references, but we can never fill the gap. They are as far and as close
 to each other as time and calendar, as violin and melody,
 as life and what lies beyond the last breath.

~ Abraham Joshua Heschel

from Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion
photo by Ansel Adams

ventilating the world with tenderness

~ Greg Boyle