Tuesday, September 15, 2020

exhausted





When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight,

The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.

The tide you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken for the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.




~ John O'Donohue
from To Bless the Space Between Us
art by van gogh





Monday, September 14, 2020

indescribable vastness







Indescribable vastness,
streaming from all sides,
streaming from no sides,
an ocean full and overflowing
with a luminous nothing.

...

where no word has ever gone, but
out of which the Word emerges.
And so this Silence washes
into the shores of perception,
making it stretch to receive
in metaphors of light,
union, calm,
spaciousness.

...

You are the vastness 
into which you gaze.
"Deep calls unto deep in the 
roar of your waters" (Ps 42:7)



~ Martin Laird
from for lovers of god everywhere
NASA photo of star cluster NGC 602


 

immersion







There is anger abroad in the world, a numb thunder,
because of God's silence. But how naive,
to keep wanting words we could speak ourselves,
English, Urdu, Tagalog, the French of Tours,
the French of Haiti...

Yes, that was one way omnipotence chose
to address us - Hebrew, Aramaic, or whatever the patriarchs
chose in their turn to call what they heard. Moses
demanded the word, spoken and written. But perfect freedom
assured other ways of speech. God is surely
patiently trying to immerse us in a different language,
events of grace, horrifying scrolls of history
and the unearned retrieval of blessings lost for ever,
the poor grass returning after drought, timid, persistent.
God's abstention is only from human dialects. The holy voice
utters its woe and glory in myriad musics, in signs and portents.
Our own words are for us to speak, a way to ask and to answer.




~ Denise Levertov
from for lovers of god everywhere
Poems of the Christian Mystics
art by Hillal Hussain
 
 

 

Saturday, September 12, 2020

funny









What’s it like to be a human
the bird asked


I myself don’t know
it’s being held prisoner by your skin
while reaching infinity

being a captive of your scrap of time
while touching eternity

being hopelessly uncertain
and helplessly hopeful

being a needle of frost
and a handful of heat

breathing in the air
and choking wordlessly

it’s being on fire
with a nest made of ashes

eating bread
while filling up on hunger

it’s dying without love
it’s loving through death


That’s funny said the bird
and flew effortlessly up into the air




—Anna Kamienska 
from Astonishments 
translated by Grazyna Drabik and David Curzon
with thanks to love is a place



before sorrow



 
 
Before sorrow, anger,
longing, or fear have arisen,
you are in the center.
 
When these emotions appear
and you know how to see through them,
you are in harmony.
 
That center is the root of the universe;
that harmony is the Tao,
which reaches out to all things.
 
 
 
 
~ Stephen Mitchell
 from The Second Book of the Tao
 
 
 


Friday, September 11, 2020

a problem thought cannot resolve





The self is a problem that thought cannot resolve. 
There must be an awareness which is not of thought. 
To be aware, without condemnation or justification, of the activities of the self - 
just to be aware - is sufficient. 

If you are aware in order to find out how to resolve the problem, 
in order to transform it, in order to produce a result, 
then it is still within the field of the self, of the 'me'. 
So long as we are seeking a result, whether through analysis, 
through awareness, through constant examination of every thought, 
we are still within the field of thought, 
which is within the field of the 'me', of the 'I', of the ego, or what you will. 

As long as the activity of the mind exists, surely there can be no love. 
When there is love, we shall have no social problems.





~ J. Krishnamurti
with thanks to j. krishnamurti online



letter to a young activist








Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the truth of the work itself. And there, too, a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually as you struggle less and less for an idea, and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.

You are fed up with words, and I don’t blame you. I am nauseated by them sometimes. I am also, to tell you the truth, nauseated by ideals and with causes. This sounds like heresy, but I think you will understand what I mean. It is so easy to get engrossed with ideas and slogans and myths that in the end one is left holding the bag, empty, with no trace of meaning left in it. And then the temptation is to yell louder than ever in order to make the meaning be there again by magic. Going through this kind of reaction helps you to guard against this. Your system is complaining of too much verbalizing, and it is right.

…The big results are not in your hands or mine, but they suddenly happen, and we can share in them, but there is no point in building our lives on this personal satisfaction, which may be denied us and which after all is not that important.

The next step in the process is for you to see that your even thinking about what you are doing is crucially important. You are probably striving to build yourself an identity in your work, out of your work and witness. You are using it, so to speak, to protect yourself against nothingness, annihilation. That is not the right use of your work. All the good that you will do will come, not from you but from the fact that you have allowed yourself, in the obedience of faith, to be used by God’s love. Think of this more and gradually you will be free from the need to prove yourself, and you can be more open to the power that will work through you without your knowing it.



~ Thomas Merton



suchness









In the theosophy of light,
The logical universal
Ceases to be anything more
Than the dead body of an angel.
What is substance? Our substance
Is whatever we feed our angel.
The perfect incense for worship
Is camphor, whose flames leave no ashes.



~ Kenneth Rexroth
from Selected Poems



 

die to everything that you know



 
 
 
 
We have to understand another phenomenon in life, which is death: death from old age, or disease, and accidental death, through disease, or naturally.  We grow old inevitably, and that age is shown in the way we have lived our life, it shows in our face, whether we have satisfied our appetites crudely, brutally.  We lose sensitivity, the sensitivity we had when young, fresh, innocent.  And as we grow older we become insensitive, dull, unaware, and gradually enter the grave.
 
So there is old age.  And there is this extraordinary thing called death, of which most of us are dreadfully frightened.  If we are not frightened, we have rationalized this phenomenon intellectually and have accepted the edicts of the intellect.  But it is still there.  And obviously there is the ending of the organism, the body.  And we accept that naturally, because we see everything dying.  But what we do not accept is the psychological ending, of the "me," with the family, with the house, with success, the things I have done, and the things I have still to do, the fulfillments and the frustrations - and there is something more to do before I end!  And the psychological entity, we're afraid that will come to an end - the "me," the "I," the "soul," in the various forms, words, that we give to the center of our being.
 
Does it come to an end?  Does it have a continuity?  The East has said it has a continuity: there is reincarnation, being born better in the next life if you have lived rightly.  If you believe in reincarnation, as the whole of Asia does (I don't know why they do, but it gives them a great deal of comfort), then in that idea is implied, if you observe it very closely, that what you do now, every day, matters tremendously.  Because in the next life you're going to pay for it or be rewarded depending on how you have lived.  So what matters is not what you believe will happen in the next life but what you are and how you live.  And that is implied also when you talk about resurrection.  Here (in the West) you have symbolized it in one person and worship that person, because you yourself don't know how to be reborn again in your life now (not "in heaven at the right hand of God," whatever that may mean).
 
So what matters is how you live now- not what your beliefs are - but what you are, what you do.  But we are afraid that the center, called the "I," may come to an end.  We ask: Does it come to an end?  Please listen to this!
 
You have lived in thought; that is, you have given tremendous importance to thinking.  But thinking is old; thinking is never new; thinking is the continuation of memory.  If you have lived there, obviously there is some kind of continuity.  And it is a continuity that is dead, over, finished.  It is something old; only that which ends can have something new.  So dying is very important to understand; to die; to die to everything that one knows. 
 
 I don't know if you have ever tried it.  To be free from the known, to be free from your memory, even for a few days, to be free from your pleasure, without any argument, without any fear, to die to your family, to your house, to your name, to become completely anonymous.  It is only the person who is completely anonymous who is in a state of non-violence, who has no violence.  And so to die every day, not as an idea but actually-do do it sometime!
 
You know, one has collected so much, not only books, houses, the bank account, but inwardly, the memories of insults, the memories of flattery, the memories of neurotic achievements, the memory of holding on to your own particular experience, which gives you a position.  To die to all that without argument, without discussion, without any fear, just to give it up.  Do it sometime, you'll see.  
 
It used to be the tradition in the East that a rich man every five years or so gave up everything, including his money, and began again.  You can't do that nowadays; there are too many people, everyone wanting your job, the population explosion, and all the rest of it.  But to do it psychologically-not give up your wife, your clothes, your husband, your children, or your house, but inwardly-is not to be attached to anything.  In that there is great beauty.  After all, it is love, isn't it?  Love is not attachment.  When there is attachment, there is fear.  And fear inevitably becomes authoritarian, possessive, oppressive, dominating.
 
So meditation is the understanding of life, which is to bring about order.  Order is virtue, which is light.  This light is not to be lit by another, however experienced, however clever, however erudite, however spiritual.  Nobody on earth or in heaven can light that except yourself in your own understanding and meditation.
 
To die to everything within oneself!  For love is innocent and fresh, young, and clear.  Then, if you have established this order, this virtue, this beauty, this light in yourself, then you can go beyond.  This means that the mind, having laid order-which is not of thought-the mind then becomes utterly quiet, silent, naturally, without any force, without any discipline.  And in the light of that silence all actions can take place, the daily living, from that silence.  And if one were lucky enough to have gone that far, then in that silence there is quite a different movement, which is not of time, which is not of words, which is not measurable by thought, because it is always new.  It is that immeasurable something that man has everlastingly sought.  But you have to come upon it; it cannot be given to you. 
 
 It is not the word or the symbol; those are destructive.  But for it to come, you must have complete order, beauty, love.  Therefore you must die to everything that you know psychologically, so that you mind is clear, not tortured, so that it sees things as they are, both outwardly and inwardly.
 
 
 
 
~ J. Krishnamurti,
 from talks in Europe 1968
May 19, 1968
Amsterdam
 
 

Thursday, September 10, 2020

in the deep woods





You find a flower half-buried in leaves,
And in your eye its very fate resides.
Loving beauty, you caress the bloom;
Soon enough, you’ll sweep petals from the floor.


Terrible to love the lovely so,
To count your own years, to say “I’m old,”
To see a flower half-buried in leaves
And come face to face with what you are.

 


~   Han Shan
 
 

In Basho's house




In Basho's house
there are no walls,
no roof, floors
or pathway -
nothing to show

where it is,
yet you can enter
from any direction
through a door
that's always open.

You hear voices
though no one
is near you -
you'll listen without
knowing you do.

Time and time
you get up to greet
a stranger coming
towards you.
No one ever appears.

Hours and seasons
lose their names -
as do passing clouds.
Rising moon and setting sun
no longer cast shadows.

Sounds drift in
like effortless breathing -
frogsplash, birdsong,
echoes of your
own footsteps.

It all ceases
to exist in Basho's house -
the place you've entered
without knowing
you've taken a step.

Sit down. Breathe
in, breathe out.
Close your tired eyes.
Basho is sitting beside you -
a guest in his own house.




~  Peter Skyzynecki
from:  Old/New World: New & Selected Poems



Tuesday, September 8, 2020

a moment outside the moment









From birth to death time surrounds us

with its intangible walls.
We fall with the centuries, the years, the minutes.
Is time only a falling, only a wall?
For a moment, sometimes, we see
not with our eyes but with our thoughts
time resting in a pause.
The world half-opens and we glimpse
the immaculate kingdom,
the pure forms, presences
unmoving, floating
on the hour, a river stopped:
truth, beauty, numbers, ideas
and goodness, a word buried
in our century.
A moment without weight or duration,
a moment outside the moment:
thought sees, our eyes think.








~ Octavio Paz





between what I see and what I say




for Roman Jakobson

1

Between what I see and what I say,
Between what I say and what I keep silent,
Between what I keep silent and what I dream,
Between what I dream and what I forget:
poetry.
It slips
between yes and no,
says
what I keep silent,
keeps silent
what I say,
dreams
what I forget.
It is not speech:
it is an act.
It is an act
of speech.
Poetry
speaks and listens:
it is real.
And as soon as I say
it is real,
it vanishes.
Is it then more real?

2

Tangible idea,
intangible
word:
poetry
comes and goes
between what is
and what is not.
It weaves
and unweaves reflections.
Poetry
scatters eyes on a page,
scatters words on our eyes.
Eyes speak,
words look,
looks think.
To hear
thoughts,
see
what we say,
touch
the body of an idea.
Eyes close,
the words open.





~ Octavio Paz (1914-1998),
from A Tree Within, (Poems 1976-1987)








Monday, September 7, 2020

opening





Opening the letter of the body's life
inside the words.  This body, your life, is a letter
to the king of the universe.

Go to a private place and open it and read to see if
the words are right.  If they

aren't, start another!  And don't think it's easy to open
the body and read the secret

message.  This is the most courageous work, not something
for children playing with knucklebones in the dirt.

Open to the title page.  Is what it says there the same as what you
have said it says?  If

you're carrying a heavy sack, empty out the stones!  Bring
only what should be given.




~ Rumi
from The Soul of Rumi
translation by Coleman Barks



Sunday, September 6, 2020

self-imposed suffering






If we live in the moment, we are not in time. 
If you think, "I'm a retired person. I've retired from my role,"
 you are looking back at your life. It's retrospective; it's life in the rear-view mirror.
 If you're young, you might be thinking, "I have my whole life ahead of me. 
This is what I'll do later." That kind of thinking is called time-binding.
 It causes us to focus on the past or the future 
and to worry about what comes next.

Getting caught up in memories of the past or worrying about the future
 is a form of self-imposed suffering. Either retirement or youth 
can be seen as moving on, time for something different, something new.
 Aging is not a culmination. Youth isn't preparation for later.
 This isn't the end of the line or the beginning.

Now isn't a time to look back or plan ahead. 
It's time to just be present. The present is timeless. 
Being in the moment, just being here with what is,
 is ageless and eternal.
 
 
 
~ Ram Dass