autumn refrain

The skreak and skritter of evening gone

And grackles gone and sorrows of the sun,

The sorrows of sun, too, gone . . . the moon and moon,

The yellow moon of words about the nightingale

In measureless measures, not a bird for me

But the name of a bird and the name of a nameless air

I have never–shall never hear. And yet beneath

The stillness of everything gone, and being still,

Being and sitting still, something resides,

Some skreaking and skrittering residuum,

And grates these evasions of the nightingale

Though I have never–shall never hear that bird.

And the stillness is in the key, all of it is,

The stillness is all in the key of that desolate sound.

~ Wallace Stevens

a harmony

 

When you do things

from your soul,

you feel a river

moving in you,

a joy.

When actions come

from another section,

the feeling disappears

Don’t let others lead you

They may be blind

or, worse, vultures.

Reach for the rope of God

And what is that?

Putting aside self-will.

Because of willfulness

people sit in jail,

the trapped bird’s wings are tied,

fish sizzle in the skillet.

The anger of police is willfulness.

You've seen a magistrate

inflict visible punishment

Now see the invisible.

If you could leave your selfishness,

you would see how

you've been torturing your soul

We are born and live inside

black water in a well.

How could we know

what an open field of sunlight is?

Don’t insist on going

where you think you want to go

Ask the way to the spring.

Your living pieces

will form a harmony.

There is a moving palace

that floats in the air

with balconies and

clear water flowing through,

infinity everywhere,

yet contained under a single tent.

~ Jelalludin Rumi

from The Soul of Rumi 

translated by Coleman Barks

art by van gogh

'le bapteme de solitude'

 

 

 

 

 

 Immediately when you arrive in Sahara, for the first or the tenth time,

 you notice the stillness. An incredible, absolute silence prevails outside the towns;

 and within, even in busy places like the markets, there is a hushed quality in the air,

 as if the quiet were a conscious force which, resenting the intrusion of sound,

 minimizes and disperses sound straightaway. Then there is the sky,

 compared to which all other skies seem fainthearted efforts. Solid and luminous,

 it is always the focal point of the landscape. At sunset, the precise, 

curved shadow of the earth rises into it swiftly from the horizon, 

cutting into light section and dark section. When all daylight is gone,

 and the space is thick with stars, it is still of an intense and burning blue, 

darkest directly overhead and paling toward the earth, 

so that the night never really goes dark.

You leave the gate of the fort or town behind, pass the camels lying outside, 

go up into the dunes, or out onto the hard, stony plain and stand awhile alone. 

Presently, you will either shiver and hurry back inside the walls,

 or you will go on standing there and let something very peculiar happen to you, 

something that everyone who lives there has undergone 

and which the French call 'le bapteme de solitude.' 

 

It is a unique sensation, and it has nothing to do with loneliness,

 for loneliness presupposes memory. Here in this wholly mineral landscape

 lighted by stars like flares, even memory disappears...

A strange, and by no means pleasant, process of reintegration begins inside you,

 and you have the choice of fighting against it, and insisting on remaining 

the person you have always been, or letting it take its course.

 For no one who has stayed in the Sahara for a while

 is quite the same as when he came.

...Perhaps the logical question to ask at this point is: Why go? 

The answer is that when a man has been there and undergone the baptism of solitude 

he can't help himself. Once he has been under the spell of the vast luminous, 

silent country, no other place is quite strong enough for him, 

no other surroundings can provide the supremely satisfying sensation

 of existing in the midst of something that is absolute.

 He will go back, whatever the cost in time or money,

 for the absolute has no price.

 

 

 

 

 ~  Paul Bowles, 

from Their Heads are Green and Their Hands are Blue: 

Scenes from the Non-Christian World

 

 

 

 

 

under the calm influence of the heavens?

.

 

 

Long afternoons of childhood..., not yet really

life; still only growing-time

that drags at the knees -, time of defenseless waiting.

And between what we will perhaps become

and this edgeless existence -: deaths,

uncountable.  Love, the possessive, surrounds

the child forever betrayed in secret

and promises him to the future; which is not his own.

Afternoons that he spent by himself, staring

from mirror to mirror; puzzling himself with the riddle

of his own name: Who? Who? - But the others 

come home again, overwhelm him.

What the window or path

or the moldy smell of a drawer

confided to him yesterday: they drown it out and destroy it.

Once more he belongs to them.

As tendrils sometimes fling themselves out from the thicker

bushes, his desire will fling itself out

from the tangle of family and hang there, swaying in the light.

But daily they blunt his glance upon their inhabited 

walls - that wide innocent glance which lets dogs in

and holds the tall flowers,

still almost face to face.

Oh how far it is

from this watched-over creature to everything that will someday

be his wonder or his destruction.

His immature strength

learns cunning among the traps.

But the constellation

of his future love has long 

been moving among the stars.  What terror

will tear his heart out of the track of its fleeing

to place it in perfect submission, under the calm

influence of the heavens?

 

 

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from his uncollected poems

translation by Stephen Mitchell

the way you see things

 

 

 

 

 

 It is not by preaching or expounding the sutras (scriptures)
that you fulfill the task of awakening others to self-realization;
it is rather by the way you walk,
the way you stand,
the way you sit and
the way you see things.




~  Thich Nhat Hanh

 with thanks to louie louie

 

 

 

to the sorrow string

You invisible one

resounding on your own

whatever the others 

happen to be playing

source of a note

not there in the score

under whatever key

unphrased continuo

gut stretched between

the beginning and the end

what would the music

be without you

since even through

the chorus of pure joy

the tears hear you

and nothing can restrain them

~ W.S. Merwin

one great thing

And I thought over again

My small adventures

As with a shore-wind I drifted out

In my kayak

And thought I was in danger,

My fears,

Those small ones

That I thought so big 

For all the vital things

I had to get and to reach.

And yet, there is only

One great thing,

The only thing:

To live to see in huts and on journeys

The great day that dawns,

And the light that fills the world.

~ Inuit song

photo by Alvis Zujevs

while things are quiet

Things are easier to control while things are quiet.

Things are easier to plan far in advance.

Things break easier while they are still brittle.

Things are easier hid while they are still small.

Prevent problems before they arise.

Take action before things get out of hand.

The tallest tree

begins as a tiny sprout.

The tallest building

starts with one shovel of dirt.

A journey of a thousand miles

starts with a single footstep.

If you rush into action, you will fail.

If you hold on too tight, you will lose your grip.

Therefore the Master lets things take their course

and thus never fails.

She doesn't hold on to things

and never loses them.

By pursing your goals too relentlessly,

you let them slip away.

If you are as concerned about the outcome

as you are about the beginning,

then it is hard to do things wrong.

The master seeks no possessions.

She learns by unlearning,

thus she is able to understand all things.

~ Lao Tzu

from the Tao Te Ching

translation by j. h. mcdonald

it needs the metaphor of the body ...

The spirit
likes to dress up like this:
ten fingers,
ten toes,

shoulders, and all the rest
at night
in the black branches,
in the morning

in the blue branches
of the world.
It could float, of course,
but would rather

plumb rough matter.
Airy and shapeless thing,
it needs
the metaphor of the body,

lime and appetite,
the oceanic fluids;
it needs the body's world,
instinct

and imagination
and the dark hug of time,
sweetness
and tangibility,

to be understood,
to be more than pure light
that burns
where no one is --

so it enters us --
in the morning
shines from brute comfort
like a stitch of lightning;

and at night
lights up the deep and wondrous
drownings of the body
like a star. 



~ Mary Oliver 

crossroads

 

 

 

My body, now that we will not be traveling together much longer
I begin to feel a new tenderness toward you, very raw and unfamiliar,
like what I remember of love when I was young —

love that was so often foolish in its objectives
but never in its choices, its intensities
Too much demanded in advance, too much that could not be promised —

My soul has been so fearful, so violent;
forgive its brutality.
As though it were that soul, my hand moves over you cautiously,

not wishing to give offense
but eager, finally, to achieve expression as substance:

it is not the earth I will miss,
it is you I will miss.

 

 

 

 

~  Louise Glück

 from A Village Life

with thanks to brain pickings

 

 

about this mind

 

 

 

 

 

About this mind,

in truth there is nothing really wrong with it.

It is intrinsically pure.

Within itself it's already peaceful.

 

If the mind is not peaceful these days,

it's because it follows moods.

The real mind doesn't have anything to it;

it is simply an aspect of nature.

It becomes peaceful or agitated because

moods deceive it.

 

The untrained mind is stupid.

Sense impressions come and trick it into 

happiness,

suffering,

gladness, and 

sorrow,

but the mind's true nature is none of those things.

 

That gladness or sadness is not the mind,

 but only a mood coming to deceive us.

The untrained mind gets lost and follows these thing;

it forgets itself.

Then we think that it is we who are 

upset or at ease or whatever.

 

But really this mind of ours is already unmoving and peaceful -

really peaceful!

Just like a leaf which remains still 

so long as the wind doesn't blow.

If a wind comes up, the leaf flutters.

The fluttering is due to the wind -

the fluttering of the mind is due to those sense impressions;

the mind follows them.

If it doesn't follow them,

it doesn't flutter.

If we know fully the true nature of sense impressions,

we will be unmoved.

 

Our practice is simply to see the "Original Mind."

We train the mind to know those sense impressions

and not get lost in them,

to make it peaceful.

 

Just this is the aim of all this difficult practice.

 

 

 

 

~ Ajahn Chah

 from Food for the Heart -

The Collected Teachings of Ajahn Chah

art by Cameron Gray

 

 

 

in space

In space

(the experiment

suggested by two fifth graders),

a Canadian astronaut

wrings water out of a towel.

It stays by the towel,

horizontal

transparent isinglass,

a hyaline column.

Then begins to cover his hands,

his wrists,

stays on them

until he passes it to another towel.

On earth

some who watch this

recognize the wrung, irrational soul.

How it does not leave

but stays close,

outside the cleaning twist-fate but close--

fear  desire  anger

joy  irritation 

mourning

wet stuff

that is shining, that cannot go from us,

having nowhere other to fall.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from The Beauty

how to let go

We already know how to let go -

 we do it every night when we go to sleep, 

and that letting go, like a good night's sleep, is delicious. 

Opening in this way, 

we can live in the reality of our wholeness. 

A little letting go brings us a little peace, 

a greater letting go brings us a greater peace.

Entering the gateless gate, 

we begin to treasure the moments of wholeness. 

We begin to trust the natural rhythm of the world, 

just as we trust our own sleep and how our own breath breathes itself.

~ Jack Kornfield

 

mist and moonlight and memory

 

 

 

 

 

 

I live in a well. I live like smoke in the well.

Like vapor in a stone throat. 

I don't move. 

I don't do anything but wait.

 Overhead I see the cold stars of night and
morning, and I see the sun. 

And sometimes I sing old songs 

of this world when it was young. 

How can I tell you what I am when I don't know? 

I cannot. I am simply waiting.

 I am mist and moonlight and memory.

 I am sad and I am old.

 Sometimes I fall like rain into the well. 

Spider webs are startled into forming 

where my rain falls fast, on the water surface.

 I wait in cool silence and there will be a day 

when I no longer wait.

Now it is morning.

- Ray Bradbury

from the short story, The One Who Waits 

with thanks to whiskey river

making the darkness conscious

 

 

 

 

 

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light,

but by making the darkness conscious.
The later procedure, however,

 is disagreeable and therefore not popular.

~ Carl Jung
from The Philosophical Tree 

 

 

When we turn toward our pain instead of away from it,

self-mercy enters those parts of ourselves we had closed off, withdrawn from,

or abandoned to feelings of impotence. When it seems there is nowhere

 else to turn, when all our prayers and strategies seem to be of little avail,

 something deeper arises: a mercy that leads toward the heart.

Without mercy (a quality of loving kindness that is the tender

 acceptance of even that which might be otherwise unacceptable) as 

an alternative to holding to our pain, we abandon those most painful 

memories within us to harsh judgment and merciless reflection.

The appearance of mercy, ...compassion... is absolutely unmistakable

as we learn to open into that which once closed us off.

 

Memories may always be bittersweet, but we may also find peace

 flickering, at the edges of what once caused us agitation. 

Healing, then, becomes not the absence of pain but the 

increased ability to meet it with mercy instead of loathing.

No one can wholly remove our pain. All we can do is 

increase the spaciousness of mind and heart in which it 

is allowed to decompress. 

We  meet ourselves  with simple kindness that confounds

our addiction to critical self-judgement.  We find ourselves

more likely to meet others' confusion and helplessness 

open-heartedly.  We find less need for others or ourselves

to be different in order to be loved.

We find ourselves.

~ Stephen Levine

from Unattended Sorrow