the long lesson

Again I resume the long

lesson:  how small a thing

can be pleasing, how little

in this hard world it takes

to satisfy the mind

and bring it to its rest.

Within the ongoing havoc

the woods this morning is

almost unnaturally still.

Through stalled air, unshadowed

light, a few leaves fall

of their own weight.

The sky

is gray.  It begins in mist

almost at the ground

and rises forever.  The trees

rise in silence almost

natural, but not quite,

almost eternal, but

not quite.

What more did I

think I wanted?  Here is

what has always been.

Here is what will always

be.  Even in me,

the  Maker of all this

returns in rest, even

to the slightest of His works,

a yellow leaf slowly

falling, and is pleased.

~ Wendell Berry

a pastime

For more than five years, I maintained myself this solely
 by the labor of my hands, and I found, that by working
 about six weeks a year, I could meet all the expenses of living.

In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience,
 that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship
 but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely...
It is not necessary that a man should earn his living 
by the sweat of his brow, unless he sweats easier than I do.

Some are "industrious," and appear to love labor for its own sake, 
or perhaps because it keeps them out of worse mischief; to such
 I have at present nothing to say.  Those who would not know 
what to do with more leisure than they now enjoy, 
I might advise to work twice as hard as they do - work till they pay 
for themselves, and get their free papers.  For myself I have found
 that the occupation of a day laborer was the most independent of any, 
especially as it required only thirty or forty days in a year to support one. 


The laborer's day ends with the going down of the sun,
 and he is then free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit,
 independent of his labor; but his employer, who speculates from
 month to month, has no respite from one end of the year to another.

~ Henry David Thoreau

from Walden, 'Economy,' 1854

art by Roderick Maclver

a wisp of cloud

Fixed ideas are like a wisp of cloud or smoke, 

but nonetheless people find themselves blocked or captured by these.

 You would laugh if you saw someone tripped by a cloud,

 or if someone claimed that they were imprisoned by the air. 

But, in fact, people are endlessly being trapped by things

 no more substantial than air or clouds. 

They make a wall with their mind, and then it imprisons them.

 Inherently, there is no wall or anything to trip over. 

These things are mirages 

they've created from the thoughts they gave rise to.

 Do not insist upon your own fixed ideas.

 Your persistence is your own narrow mind.

 If your mind is broad, it can easily embrace the entire world. 

However, if your mind is narrow, 

even a needle cannot enter.

 

 

 You have to keep letting go of your stubbornness, 

and always be deeply respectful of all life and things. 

 This is also how to become a free person. 

Always be humble. Be humble. 

The fragrance of your broad and generous mind
 will warm others’ hearts.

~  Zen Master Daehaeng

behind apparent opposites

Four sets of contrasting conditions that all of us are subject to

 at one point or another in our lives. The cultivation of equanimity

 involves looking deeply at our relationship to these eight conditions in life.

The first set is praise and blame. 

In the moment of being praised, can we be aware of our reactions?

 We may discover that we push praise away automatically, 

be­cause of discomfort, or that we take it in too much and find ourselves

 dependent on receiving more. In the moment of being blamed,

 can we be aware of our reactions? We may discover that our reactions

 include trying to justify our actions, blaming ourselves, or blaming

 the person who blamed us. We may im­mediately think the person is right.

 We may immediately think the person is wrong.

Of course we will probably feel badly when blamed.

 The question is: Can we be mindful of feeling badly

 rather than allowing ourselves to get lost in it?

 Can we be aware of the reaction instead of caught in the story about it?

 If it is use­ful information, can we learn from it?

 If it is not useful, can we let it go?

 Can we see that praise and blame are often

 out of our control?

The second is the arena of gain and loss.

 What is our relationship to gain? Is gain always positive? 

What is our relationship to loss? Is loss always negative? 

When we reflect on past experiences is it ever true that what we thought 

at the time was a gain was actually a loss and that what we thought was a loss

 turned out to be a gain? In attaching to having gained something,

 is there as well the fear that it will be lost? In attaching to having succeeded

 in something, is there as well the fear of failure?

In any culture there are fixed ideas of what it means to be successful

 and what it means to fail, of what it means to gain and what it means to lose.

 When we cling to models of success, we set ourselves up for disappointment. 

To question these models is to find an inner freedom that emerges 

out of understanding and is not based on models. 

In non-attachment we allow for wis­dom to emerge. 

We see that gain and loss are a natural part of the flux of life. 

The third set is the need to become aware of our relationship to pleasure and pain, 

  What is the result of running after pleasure and pushing away pain?

 Can we become more aware of the suffering inherent in the pursuit of pleasure

 and in the avoidance of pain? Or is it possible to experience pleasure 

fully without clinging to it and trying to make it last?

 In the moment of experi­encing something painful can we open to the pain

 without trying to get rid of it?

To experience liberation in relation­ship to these, we need to understand

 their changing nature. Understanding that both pleasure and pain 

arise and pass away, and seeing that both are often out of our control, 

we learn not to cling to either; and in non-clinging there is freedom. 

We open to pleasure and pain, 

yet are not overwhelmed by desire or aversion.

The last set is fame and disrepute.

 Do we need to be seen by others when we do something we think worthy? 

What is our reaction to being misjudged? 

What is our re­lationship to status?

 Being aware of our relationship to fame and disrepute

 allows us to be free from dependency on the opinions of others.

 We to learn how to see their insubstantiality of each condition. 

Through being mindful we become more aware of the impermanence of both.

 We see the conditional nature of fame, and that lasting peace and hap­piness

 doesn’t come through being fa­mous. We see that disrepute is tempo­rary, 

and need not bring lasting unhap­piness. The more balanced we can be

 in relationship to these, the more we free ourselves from having to be seen

 by others in any particular way. When no longer swayed by changing tides

 of fame or disrepute, we discover a peace 

that doesn’t depend on how others see us.

If we can remember more and more to bring mindfulness to these occasions

 as they arise in our daily life, we can begin to see the suffering of attachment.

 We can begin to see the essential emptiness and impermanence of conditions.

 In meditation practice we may not like what arises, and yet it is the willingness

 to stay with what is happening that brings liberation.

 The less attached we are to comfort, 

the more at ease we are within ourselves

 and within this world. 

This doesn’t mean that we have to be passive par­ticipants in life. 

If it’s hot we can open the windows. But in the many times when we cannot 

change or control our experiences, can we find an inner refuge?

 This inner refuge is the capacity to be equanimous.

 

 

 

~  Narayan Liebenson

from the Insight Journal

Barre Center for Buddhist Studies

 

 

 

equanimity

The Buddha described a mind filled with equanimity as
 “abundant, exalted, immeasurable, without hostility, and without ill-will.”

The English word “equanimity” translates two separate Pali words
 used by the Buddha, upekkha and tatramajjhattata. Upekkha,
 the more common term, means “to look over” and refers to the equanimity 
that arises from the power of observation—the ability to see 
without being caught by what we see. When well developed,
 such power gives rise to a great sense of peace.

Upekkha can also refer to the spaciousness that comes from seeing
 a bigger picture. Colloquially, in India the word was sometimes used to mean
 “to see with patience.” We might understand this as “seeing with understanding.” 
For example, when we know not to take offensive words personally,
 we are less likely to react to what was said. And by not reacting 
there is greater possibility to respond from wisdom and compassion.
 This form of equanimity is sometimes compared to grandmotherly love.
 The grandmother clearly loves her grandchildren but, 
thanks to her experience with her own children, 
is less likely to be caught up in the drama of the grandchildren’s lives.

Still more qualities of equanimity are revealed by the term tatramajjhattata,
 a long compound made of simple Pali words. Tatra, meaning “there,”
 sometimes refers to “all these things.” Majjha means “middle,”
 and tata means “to stand or to pose.” Put together, the word becomes
 “to stand in the middle of all this.” As a form of equanimity,
 this “being in the middle” refers to balance, to remaining centered 
in the middle of whatever is happening. This form of balance
 comes from some inner strength or stability. The strong presence
 of inner calm, well-being, confidence, vitality, or integrity
 can keep us upright, like ballast keeps a ship upright in strong winds.
. As inner strength develops, for example, from the accumulation 
of mindfulness in the ordinary moments of life, equanimity follows.

As a solid mass of rock
Is not stirred by the wind,
So a sage is not moved
By praise and blame.
As a deep lake
Is clear and undisturbed,
So a sage becomes clear
Upon hearing the Dharma.
Virtuous people always let go.
They don’t prattle about pleasures and desires.
Touched by happiness and then by suffering,
The sage shows no sign of being elated or depressed.
 

—Dhammapada 81-83

~ Tricycle Magazine Winter 2005
art by Amy Ruppel

our curriculum

If you’re involved with relationship with parents or children, 

instead of saying, "I can’t do spiritual practices because

 I have children," you say,

 "My children are my spiritual practice." 

If you’re traveling a lot, your traveling becomes your yoga.

You start to use your life as your curriculum for coming to God. 

You use the things that are on your plate, that are presented to you.

 So that relationships, economics, psychodynamics—

all of these become grist for the mill of awakening.

 They all are part of your curriculum.

 

 

 

~ Ram Dass

 

 

 

craving - aversion -> pain and sorrow

Every craving is tied to a definite object, 

and it takes this object to spark the craving itself, 

thus providing an aim for it. Craving is determined

 by the definitely given thing it seeks, just as a movement

 is set by the goal toward which it moves.

 For, as Augustine writes, love is

 "Once we have the object our desire ends, unless we are threatened

 with its loss. In that case the desire to have turns into a fear of losing."

So long as we desire temporal things, 

we are constantly under this threat, 

and our fear of losing always corresponds to our desire to have. 

Temporal goods originate and perish independently of man,

 who is tied to them by his desire. Constantly bound by craving

 and fear to a future full of uncertainties, we strip each

 present moment of its calm, its intrinsic import, 

which we are unable to enjoy. And so,

 the future destroys the present.

The present is not determined by the future as such… 

but by certain events which we hope for or fear from the future,

 and which we accordingly crave and pursue, or shun and avoid. 

Happiness consists in possession, in having and holding our good,

 and even more in being sure of not losing it.

 Sorrow consists in having lost our good and in enduring this loss.

 However, for Augustine the happiness of having 

is not contrasted by sorrow but by fear of losing.

 The trouble with human happiness is that it is constantly beset by fear.

 It is not the lack of possessing 

but the safety of possession that is at stake.

A love that seeks anything safe and disposable on earth 

is constantly frustrated, because everything is doomed to die.

 In this frustration love turns about and its object becomes a negation, 

so that nothing is to be desired except freedom from fear.

 Such fearlessness exists only in the complete calm 

that can no longer be shaken by events expected of the future.

Even if things should last, human life does not. 

We lose it daily. As we live the years pass through us 

and they wear us out into nothingness. It seems that only

 the present is real, for “things past and things to come are not”;

 but how can the present (which I cannot measure) be real

 since it has no “space”? Life is always either no more or not yet.

 Like time, life “comes from what is not yet, passes through what is

 without space, and disappears into what is no longer.” 

Can life be said to exist at all? Still the fact is that man 

does measure time. Perhaps man possesses a “space” 

where time can be conserved long enough to be measured,

 and would not this “space,” which man carries with himself, 

transcend both life and time?




~ Hannah Arendt 

from Love and Saint Augustine

 with thanks to brainpickings

after a death

Once there was a shock

that left behind a long, shimmering comet tail.

It keeps us inside.  It makes the TV pictures snowy.

It settles in cold drops on the telephone wires.

One can still go slowly on skis in the winter sun

through brush where a few leaves hang on.

They resemble pages torn from old telephone directories.

Names swallowed by the cold.

It is still beautiful to hear the heart beat

but often the shadow seems more real than the body.

The samurai looks insignificant

beside his armor of black dragon scales.

~ Tomas Transtromer

from The Half-Finished Heaven

translated by Robert Bly

listen to me as one listens to the rain

Listen to me as one listens to the rain,

not attentive, not distracted,

light footsteps, thin drizzle,

water that is air, air that is time,

the day is still leaving,

the night has yet to arrive,

figurations of mist

at the turn of the corner,

figurations of time

at the bend in this pause,

listen to me as one listens to the rain,

without listening, hear what I say

with eyes open inward, asleep

with all five senses awake,

it’s raining, light footsteps, a murmur of syllables,

air and water, words with no weight:

what we are and are,

the days and years, this moment,

weightless time and heavy sorrow,

listen to me as one listens to the rain,

wet asphalt is shining,

steam rises and walks away,

night unfolds and looks at me,

you are you and your body of steam,

you and your face of night,

you and your hair, unhurried lightning,

you cross the street and enter my forehead,

footsteps of water across my eyes,

listen to me as one listens to the rain,

the asphalt’s shining, you cross the street,

it is the mist, wandering in the night,

it is the night, asleep in your bed,

it is the surge of waves in your breath,

your fingers of water dampen my forehead,

your fingers of flame burn my eyes,

your fingers of air open eyelids of time,

a spring of visions and resurrections,

listen to me as one listens to the rain,

the years go by, the moments return,

do you hear the footsteps in the next room?

not here, not there: you hear them

in another time that is now,

listen to the footsteps of time,

inventor of places with no weight, nowhere,

listen to the rain running over the terrace,

the night is now more night in the grove,

lightning has nestled among the leaves,

a restless garden adrift—go in,

your shadow covers this page.

~ Octavio Paz

 translation by Eliot Weinberger

the solitary man

.

No, what my heart will be is a tower,

and I will be right out on its rim:

nothing else will be there, only pain

and what can’t be said, only the world.

Only one thing left in the enormous space

that will go dark and then light again,

only one final face full of longing,

exiled into what is always full of thirst,

only one farthest-out face made of stone,

at peace with its own inner weight,

which the distances, who go on ruining it,

force on to deeper holiness.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

interview - simple but not easy

~ Robert Wright, Joseph Goldstein

the faraway

O'Keeffe grew to love the desert, which she called 
"the faraway." 
She felt that the thin, dry air enabled her to see farther, 
and she was awed by the seemingly infinite space 
that surrounded her.

 She would devote much of the rest of her career to painting desert scenery.

~ Georgia O'Keeffe

1918 photo by Alfred Stieglitz
from the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe

dive for dreams

dive for dreams

or a slogan may topple you

(trees are their roots

and wind is wind)

trust your heart

if the seas catch fire

(and live by love

though the stars walk backward)

honour the past

but welcome the future

(and dance your death

away at the wedding)

never mind a world

with its villains or heroes

(for good likes girls

and tomorrow and the earth)

in spite of everything

which breathes and moves, since Doom

(with white longest hands

neating each crease)

will smooth entirely our minds

-before leaving my room

i turn, and (stooping

through the morning) kiss

this pillow, dear

where our heads lived and were.

silently if, out of not knowable

silently if, out of not knowable

night's utmost nothing,wanders a little guess

(only which is this world)more my life does

not leap than with the mystery your smile

sings or if(spiraling as luminous

they climb oblivion)voices who are dreams,

less into heaven certainly earth swims

than each my deeper death becomes your kiss

losing through you what seemed myself,i find

selves unimaginably mine;beyond

sorrow's own joys and hoping's very fears

yours is the light by which my spirit's born:

yours is the darkness of my soul's return

-you are my sun,my moon,and all my stars

e. e. cummings
 art by the author