Friday, June 12, 2020

unbelief







Unbelief is good medicine, undoing belief
better:
all beings free to leave their being
and enter silence.

The nameless tree with its forest
of green,
the endless expanse called
sky, beaks and

feathered wings with their urgent
conversations;
all around, the light that sets the vital body
to humming,

and the dark of re-creation:
the world held for us in promise
until it is loosened from
our thinking.





~ Andrew Colliver
from the unpublished manuscript, A Day of Light






today, another universe








The arborist has determined:
senescence beetles canker
quickened by drought
but in any case
not prunable not treatable not to be propped.

And so.

The branch from which the sharp-shinned hawks and their mate-cries.
The trunk where the ant.
The red squirrels’ eighty-foot playground.
The bark cambium pine-sap cluster of needles.

The Japanese patterns the ink-net.
The dapple on certain fish.

Today, for some, a universe will vanish.
First noisily,
then just another silence.

The silence of after, once the theater has emptied.

Of bewilderment after the glacier,
the species, the star.

Something else, in the scale of quickening things,
will replace it,

this hole of light in the light, the puzzled birds swerving around it.






 ~ Jane Hirshfield
from Ledger




Tuesday, June 9, 2020

extending and deepening








I think that each of us has a huge pre-life -
 a life that we have before we ever show up physically on the planet.
 And I think that hundreds of thousands of years of imagination and dreaming
 at the divine level went into the creation of the masterpiece that is each individuality.

And if you look at individuals - I mean, there is a different world hidden
 behind each human face. So each one of us carries a unique narrative, 
a unique memory. And different possibilities sleep in the clay of our hearts.
 So individuality is never repetitious or repeated.

So that must mean in the great circle of belonging that you have something
 special to do in the universe which can be done by no one else but you. 
If somebody else could do it, they’d be here and you wouldn't be here.

So I think that one of the fascinating things about identity
 is exactly this dialectic of destiny, which sets the outer frame of your life, 
and freedom which fills its inner form. And I think each of us in every moment
 of our experience are really extending and deepening that secret and subtle narrative.




~ John O'Donohue


Monday, June 8, 2020

my life

.



My mistakes are my life.




~ Samuel Beckett
from Waiting For Godot 



so you think that you're a failure





So you think that you're a failure, do you? 
Well, you probably are. What's wrong with that? 

In the first place, if you've any sense at all 
you must have learned by now that we pay 
just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats.

 Go ahead and fail. 
But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style.
 A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success.

 Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. 
That may be the only way any of us will ever be free.




~ Tom Robbins
from Even Cowgirls get the Blues




.

any good? you ask me.








You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. 
You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. 
You compare them with other poems, and you are upset
 when certain editors reject your work. Now
 (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop
 doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside,
 and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise
 or help you – no one. There is only one thing you should do. 

Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; 
see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart;
 confess to yourself whether you would have to die 
if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself
 in the most silent hour of your night: must I write?

 Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent,
 if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,”
 then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life,
 even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, 
must become a sign and witness to this impulse.






 ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
from  Letters to a Young Poet, Letter One
art: self-portrait Edvard Munch



naturally and spontaneously






.

When you know beyond all doubting that you are that life that flows through all, 
you will love all naturally and spontaneously. When you realize the depth
 and fullness of your love of yourself, you know that every living being 
and the entire universe are included in your affection.

 But when you look
 at anything as separate from you, 
you cannot love it for you are afraid of it.
 Alienation causes fear deepens alienation. It is a vicious circle. 
Only self - realization can break it. Go for it resolutely. 

In dream you love some and not others.
 On waking up you find you are love itself, embracing all.
 Personal love, however intense and genuine, invariably binds;
 love in freedom is love of all....When you are love itself, 
you are beyond time and numbers. In loving one you love all,
 in loving all, you love each.
 One and all are not exclusive. 

All the universe will be your concern;
 every living thing you will love and help most tenderly and wisely.



Nisargadatta Maharaj
from I am that 



luminous, brimming, playful







Poetry reveals that there is no empty space.

When your truth forsakes its shyness,
When your fears surrender to your strengths,
You will begin to experience
That all existence
Is a teeming sea of infinite life.

In a handful of ocean water
You could not count all the finely tuned
Musicians
Who are acting stoned
For very intelligent and sane reasons
And of course are becoming extremely sweet
And wild!

In a handful of the sky and earth,
In a handful of God,
We cannot count
All the ecstatic lovers who are dancing there
Behind the mysterious veil.

True art reveals there is no void
Or darkness.
There is no loneliness to the clear-eyed mystic
In this luminous, brimming
Playful world. 
 



~  Hafiz
photo by  M. I. Walker
 with thanks to love is a place
 
 
 the more one looks with eyes of gratitude and appreciation,
the keener your sight will be, the more will be revealed to you, 
the gates of the garden will open here and now.



 

Sunday, June 7, 2020

cry out






A dragon was pulling a bear into its terrible mouth.

A courageous man went and rescued the bear.
There are such helpers in the world, who rush to save
anyone who cries out. Like Mercy itself,
they run toward the screaming.

And they can't be bought off.
If you were to ask one of those, "Why did you come
so quickly?" he or she would say, "Because I heard
your helplessness."

Where lowland is,
that's where water goes. All medicine wants
is pain to cure.

And don't just ask for one mercy.
Let them flood in. Let the sky open under your feet.
Take the cotton out of your ears, the cotton
of consolations, so you can hear the sphere-music.

Push the hair out of your eyes.
Blow the phlegm from your nose,
and from your brain.

Let the wind breeze through.
Leave no residue in yourself from that bilious fever.
Take the cure for impotence,
that your manhood may shoot forth,
and a hundred new beings come of your coming.

Tear the binding from around the foot
of your soul, and let it race around the track
in front of the crowd. Loosen the knot of greed
so tight on your neck. Accept your new good luck.

Give your weakness
to one who helps.

Crying out loud and weeping are great resources.
A nursing mother, all she does
is wait to hear her child.

Just a little beginning-whimper,
and she's there.

God created the child, that is your wanting,
so that it might cry out, so that milk might come.

Cry out! Don't be stolid and silent
with your pain. Lament! And let the milk
of loving flow into you.

The hard rain and wind
are ways the cloud has
to take care of us.

Be patient.
Respond to every call
that excites your spirit.

Ignore those that make you fearful
and sad, that degrade you
back toward disease and death. 




~ Rumi




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