Tuesday, January 18, 2022

imagine





Imagine if all the tumult of the body were to quiet down, 
along with our busy thoughts. 
Imagine if all things that are perishable grew still. 
And imagine if that moment were to go on and on, 
leaving behind all other sights and sounds 
but this one vision 
which ravishes and absorbs 
and fixes the beholder in joy, 
so that the rest of eternal life were like 
that moment of illumination which leaves us breathless. 




~ Saint Augustine




I do not want to step so quickly


.


.
I
Do not
Want to step so quickly
Over a beautiful line on God's palm
As I move through the earth's
Marketplace
Today.

I do not want to touch any object in this world
Without my eyes testifying to the truth
That everything is
My Beloved.

Something has happened
To my understanding of existence
That now makes my heart always full of wonder
And kindness.

I do not
Want to step so quickly
Over this sacred place on God's body
That is right beneath your
Own foot

As I
Dance with
Precious life
Today.

.
~ Hafiz
from The Gift
translation by Daniel Ladinsky
photo by albert watson

.

gratitude

 
 
 

 
 
My generation is on the way out, and each death I have felt as an abruption,
 a tearing away of part of myself. There will be no one like us when we are gone,
 but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die,
 they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, 
for it is the fate - the genetic and neural fate - of every human being
 to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, 
to die his own death. I cannot pretend I am without fear. 
 
But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. 
I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given 
something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. 
I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse 
of writers and readers. Above all, I have been a sentient being, 
a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself 
has been an enormous privilege and adventure.
 
 
 
 
 ~ Oliver Sacks
from Gratitude
with thanks to whiskey river
 
 

Monday, January 17, 2022

one truth





In all ten directions of the universe,
there is only one truth.
When we see clearly, the great teachings are the same.
What can ever be lost?  What can be attained?
If we attain something, it was there from the beginning of time.
If we lose something, it-is hiding somewhere near us.
Look: this ball in my pocket:
can you see how priceless it is?


~ Ryokan


Ryokan's love of children and animals is legendary. 
He often played games with the local children, attested to in his own poetry. 

His reputation for gentleness was sometimes carried to comical extremes. 
One tale is told that, one day when Ryokan returned to his hut 
he discovered a robber who had broken in 
and was in the process of stealing the impoverished monk's few possessions. 
In the thief's haste to leave, he left behind a cushion. 
Ryokan grabbed the cushion and ran after the thief to give it to him. 
This event prompted Ryokan to compose one of his best known poems:

The thief left it behind:
the moon
at my window.




hiding in this cage






hiding in this cage
of visible matter

is the invisible
lifebird

pay attention
to her

she is singing
your song



~ Kabir
english version by Rushil Rao





Saturday, January 15, 2022

in thanks for the life of Jim Forest

 

 
Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen: Western Explorers of the Christian East
 
 

NHAT HANH: ... If you cut yourself off from something --
 a tradition, a community -- the hope of things will be lost. 
Right at that moment. So it is not a problem of a word or a term -- 
it is the problem of life. And that problem of being simultaneously
inside and outside yourself is a very wonderful idea. 
Not an idea but a way of life, a way that retain one's self and the link
 between one's self and the other part of one's self.

DAN: This was very much a part of the style of Merton --
 the inside/outside. And it had very rich consequences, 
I think. For him and for others. He used to say that he would never
 become a monk again, but now that he was a monk, 
he would be a monk. Absolutely. Yes.

JIM FOREST: A man playing hide and seek with tradition.

NHAT HANH: Anyway, being a monk or not being a monk,
 that is not the problem. The problem is the way you are a monk 
or the way you are a non-monk. I think if we greet events
 in that way, we can master the situation.

In China, they tell the story of a man who lost his horse.
 He was sad and he wept about it. But a few days later the horse returned
 with another horse. So the man was now very happy. His loss turns
 out to be lucky. But the next day his son tried the new horse
 and fell and broke one leg. So now it is not good luck any more,
 but bad luck. So he deserts the other horse and takes his son to the hospital
 and is content with what he has. So they say, if you greet these events 
with a calm mind, then you can make the most of these events
 for the sake of your happiness. 
 
That's not me, but the Chinese! (Laughter.)
 
 
 
 
 
~ from a slightly edited transcript of a conversation
recorded in Paris in 1973 by Jim Forest between 
Thich Nhat Hanh and Daniel Berrigan. 
 
 Jim Forest died yesterday
 
with thanks to louie, louie
 
 

Friday, January 14, 2022

the man watching









I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can’t bear without a friend,
I can’t love without a sister

The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestler’s sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.
 
 
 
~ Rainer Maria Rilke 
translation by Robert Bly





this storm is you




Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. 
You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again,
 but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, 
like some ominous dance with death just before dawn.
 
 Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, 
something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. 
Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, 
step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears
 so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step.
 
 There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time.
 Just fine white sand swirling into the sky like pulverized bones.
 That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.




~ Haruki Murakami
from Kafka on the Shore



Wednesday, January 12, 2022

calm and complete





On the days when the rest
have failed you,
let this much be yours -
flies, dust, and unnameable odor,
the two waiting baskets:
one for the lemons and passion,
the other for all you have lost.
Both empty,
it will come to your shoulder,
breathe slowly against your bare arm.
If you offer it hay, it will eat.
Offered nothing,
it will stand as long as you ask.
The little bells of the bridle will hang
beside you quietly,
in the heat and the tree's thin shade.
Do not let its sparse mane deceive you,
or the way the left ear swivels into dream.
This too is a gift of the gods,
calm and complete.



~ Jane Hirshfield
from The Lives of the Heart
art by McKenzie Birnie





a healing calm





Cry out all your grief, your
disappointments! Say them in

Farsi, then Greek.  It doesn't 
matter whether you're from Rum

or Arabia.  Praise the beauty
and kindness praised by every

living being.  You hurt and have 
sharp desire, yet your presence

is a healing calm.  Sun, moon,
bonfire, candle, which?  Someone

says your flame is about to be 
dowsed, but you're not smoke or

fire. You're infinitely more
alive.  Say how that is! This

fluttering love will not stay
much longer in my chest.  Soon it 

will fly like a falcon to its
master, like a owl saying HU.




~ Rumi
from The Soul of Rumi
translation by Coleman Barks



the storm







The storm puts its lips to the house
and blows to make a sound.
I sleep restlessly, turn over, with closed
eyes read the book of the storm.

But the child's eyes grow huge in the dark
and the storm whimpers for the child.
Both love to see the swinging lamp.
Both are halfway toward speech.

Storms have childlike hands and wings.
The caravan bolts off toward Lapland
and the house senses the constellation of nails
holding its wall together.

The night is quiet above our floor
(where all the died-away footsteps
are lying like sunken leaves in a pond)
but outside the night is wild!

A more serious storm is moving over us all.
It puts its lips to our soul
and blows to make a sound.  We're afraid
the storm will blow everything inside us away.




~ Tomas Transtromer
translated by robert bly





Monday, January 3, 2022

the eyes of others






You can't see yourself. 
You know what you look like because of mirrors and photographs, 
but out there in the world, as you move among your fellow human beings,
 whether strangers or friends or the most intimate beloveds, 
your own face is invisible to you. 
 
You can see other parts of yourself, arms and legs, hands and feet, 
shoulders and torso, but only from the front, 
nothing of the back except the backs of your legs 
if you twist them into the right position,
 but not your face, never your face, and in the end -
 at least as far as others are concerned - your face is who you are,
 the essential fact of your identity. Passports do not contain pictures
 of hands and feet. Even you, who have lived inside your body
 for sixty-four years now, would probably be unable to recognize
 your foot in an isolated photograph of that foot, not to speak of your ear,
 or your elbow, or one of your eyes in close-up. 
 
All so familiar to you in the context of the whole,
 but utterly anonymous when taken piece by piece. 
We are all aliens to ourselves, and if we have any sense of who we are,
 it is only because we live inside the eyes of others.



~  Paul Auster
 
 

your mirror








Each soul is created to serve as your mirror.

All things in the two worlds
are only your mirrors.

The heart is the mirror of your most royal
beauty -

and both of these worlds
are the case of that mirror.




~ Najm al-Din Daya Razi
from Love's Alchemy: Poems from the Sufi Tradition
translation by David and Sabrineh Fideler

Friday, December 31, 2021

between the hammers our heart endures

 
 
 

 
 
 Happy are those who know
behind all words, the Unsayable stands,
and from that source, the Infinite
crosses over to gladness, and us.

Free of those bridges we raise
with constructed distinctions;
so that always, in each separate joy,
we gaze at the single, wholly mutual core.

...

But because truly being here is so much; because everything here
apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way
keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.
Once for each thing. Just once; no more. And we too,
just once. And never again. But to have been
this once, completely, even if only once:
to have been one with the earth, seems beyond undoing.
 
 ...
 
Here is the time for the say-able, here is its homeland.
Speak and bear witness. More than ever
the Things that we might experience are vanishing, for
what crowds them out and replaces them is an imageless act.
An act under a shell, which easily cracks open as soon as
the business inside outgrows it and seeks new limits.
Between the hammers our heart
endures, just as the tongue does
between the teeth and, despite that,
still is able to praise.
 
 
 
 
 
 ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
art by Keith Hennig
 



unending love








I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain,
Its ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers, shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours –
And the songs of every poet past and forever.
 
 
 
Rabindranath Tagore
from Selected Poems