it offers itself so graciously to our hearts

…. We do have a deadening desire to reduce the mystery, the uncertainty of our lives…. 

We bind our lives in solid chains of forced connections that block and fixate us. …. 

Our sense of uncertainty and our need for security nail our world down. …. 

 

Each time we go out, the world is open and free;

 it offers itself so graciously to our hearts, to create something new and wholesome

 from it each day. It is a travesty of possibility and freedom to think

 we have no choice, that things are the way they are and that the one street,

 the one right way is all that is allotted to us. 

Certainty is a subtle destroyer.

We confine our mystery within the prison of routine and repetition. 

One of the most deadening forces of all is repetition. 

Your response to the invitation and edge of your life becomes reduced 

to a series of automatic reflexes. For example, you are so used to getting up

 in the morning and observing the morning rituals of washing and dressing.

 You are still somewhat sleepy, your mind is thinking of things you have to do

 in the day that lies ahead. You go through these first gestures of the morning

 often without even noticing that you are doing them. This is a disturbing

 little image, because it suggests that you live so much of your one life

with the same automatic blindness of adaptation.

… Habit is a strong invisible prison.

 Habits are styles of feeling, perception, 

or action that have now become second nature to us.

 A habit is a sure cell of predictability; it can close you off from the unknown,

 the new, and the unexpected. You were sent to the earth to become a receiver

 of the unknown. From ancient times, these gifts were prepared for you; 

now they come towards you across eternal distances. 

Their destination is the altar of your heart. 

~ John O’Donohue

from Eternal Echoes

.

passing through

.

.

 

You are Life passing through your body, 

passing through your mind, 

passing through your soul. 

 

Once you find that out, 

not with logic, not with the intellect,

 but because you can feel that Life - 

you find out that you are,

 the force that makes the flowers open and close, 

that makes the hummingbird fly from flower to flower. 

 

You find out that you are in every tree, 

and you are in every animal, vegetable, and rock.

 

You are that force that moves the wind 

and breathes through your body. 

 

The whole universe is a living being that is moved by that force, 

and that is what you are. 

You are Life.

 

 

 

.

Don Miguel Ruiz

.

 

 

resting in gratitude

 

 

 

 

 

You have made me so rich, oh God, please let me share out Your beauty with open hands.

 My life has become an uninterrupted dialogue with You, oh God, one great dialogue.

 Sometimes when I stand in some corner of the camp, my feet planted on Your earth,

 my eyes raised toward Your heaven, tears sometimes run down my face,

 tears of deep emotion and gratitude. At night, too, when I lie in my bed and rest in You,

 oh God, tears of gratitude run down my face, and that is my prayer.

 

 I have been terribly tired for several days, but that too will pass. 

Things come and go in a deeper rhythm, and people must be taught to listen;

 it is the most important thing we have to learn in this life.

 

 I am not challenging You, oh God, my life is one great dialogue with You.

 I may never become the great artist I would really like to be, 

but I am already secure in You, God. Sometimes I try my hand

 at turning out small profundities and uncertain short stories, 

but I always end up with just one single word: God. 

And that says everything, and there is no need for anything more. 

And all my creative powers are translated into inner dialogues with You. 

The beat of my heart has grown deeper, more active, and yet more peaceful, 

and it is as if I were all the time storing up inner riches.

 

 

 

 

~ Etty Hillesum

from An Interrupted Life: The Diaries

translated by Arnold J. Pomerans

 

 

 

you can’t offer happiness until you have it for yourself

If you pour a handful of salt into a cup of water, the water becomes undrinkable.

 But if you pour the salt into a river, people can continue to draw the water to cook,

 wash, and drink. The river is immense, and it has the capacity to receive, embrace,

 and transform. When our hearts are small, our understanding and compassion are limited,

 and we suffer. We can’t accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings,

 and we demand that they change. But when our hearts expand, these same things

 don’t make us suffer anymore. We have a lot of understanding and compassion

 and can embrace others. We accept others as they are,

 and then they have a chance to transform.

When we feed and support our own happiness, we are nourishing our ability to love.

 That’s why to love means to learn the art of nourishing our happiness.

The essence of loving kindness is being able to offer happiness. 

You can be the sunshine for another person. You can’t offer happiness

 until you have it for yourself. So build a home inside by accepting yourself

 and learning to love and heal yourself. Learn how to practice mindfulness

 in such a way that you can create moments of happiness and joy

 for your own nourishment.

Then you have something to offer the other person.

If you have enough understanding and love, then every moment —

 whether it’s spent making breakfast, driving the car, watering the garden, 

or doing anything else in your day —

 can be a moment of joy.

In a deep relationship, there’s no longer a boundary between you and the other person.

 You are her and she is you. Your suffering is her suffering. Your understanding

 of your own suffering helps your loved one to suffer less.

 Suffering and happiness are no longer individual matters. 

What happens to your loved one happens to you.

 What happens to you happens to your loved one.

In true love, there’s no more separation or discrimination.

 His happiness is your happiness. Your suffering is his suffering.

 You can no longer say, “That’s your problem.”

When you love someone, you have to have trust and confidence.

Love without trust is not yet love. Of course, first you have to have trust,

 respect, and confidence in yourself. Trust that you have a good and compassionate nature.

 You are part of the universe; you are made of stars. When you look at your loved one,

 you see that he is also made of stars and carries eternity inside.

 Looking in this way, we naturally feel reverence. 

True love cannot be without trust and respect for oneself 

and for the other person.





~ Thich Nhat Hanh,
from his book How to Love 

chant of compassion,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  In memory of our beloved teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh

 we are releasing our best recording of the Namo’valokiteshvaraya chant of compassion,

 which was recorded in the Still Water Meditation Hall, Upper Hamlet,

 Plum Village, France, in autumn 2020.

 

 

 

abandon ourselves

When we are hyper-vigilant, 

we fear everything and everything offends us.  

We don't dare to move forward,

 as if we could reach the ultimate dwelling 

by leaving it to others to make the journey for us. 

 

Since that is impossible, 

why don't we exert ourselves, 

my friends, for love of our Beloved?

 Let's abandon our reason and fear into his hands. 

Forget about the weakness in our nature

 that we worry about so much. 

 

Let our families look after the safekeeping 

of our physical form; that's their concern.

 All we should focus on is getting to see

 this Beloved of ours as soon as possible.

Even if there is not much comfort on this path,

 we would be making a big mistake to fret about our health.

 Anxiety over our health does not improve it one bit; 

this I know.... The journey I'm talking about requires great humility... 

 

Unless we abandon ourselves, 

this state is arduous and burdensome. 

 We would be trudging under the load of our egos,

like mud clinging to our boots and dragging us down. 

 Those who reach the ultimate dwelling

 bear no such baggage.

~ St. Teresa of Avila

from The Interior Castle

translation by Mirabai Starr

art by Julio Anaya Cabanding

tender presence

.

May you know that absence is full of tender presence and

that nothing is forgotten.

May the absences in your life be full of eternal echo.

May you sense around you the secret Elsewhere which

holds the presences that have left your life.

May you be generous in your embrace of loss.

May the sore well of grief turn into a well of seamless

presence.

May your compassion reach out to the ones we never hear

from and may you have the courage to speak out for

the excluded ones.

May you become the gracious and passionate subject of

your own life.

May you not disrespect your mystery through brittle

words or false belonging.

May you be embraced by God in whom dawn and twilight

are one, and may your belonging inhabit its deepest

dreams within the shelter of the Great Belonging.

.

John O'Donohue
 from eternal echoes

.

be still and know

Imagine you are walking alone at night on a country road.  

No people or cars or houses around, just enough starlight to see your way, 

the only sound the sound of your shoes on the road and the swish

 of your clothes as you walk.  You feel the stillness inside of things come close. 

You stop. Now there are no sounds, except the almost-never-heard hush of things being.

You sense the stillness on all sides and an identical stillness within you.

 It makes you uneasy, as if you are about to be extinguished. 

 You try to think, to establish yourself against the stillness,

 but the voice of your thoughts sounds thin, metallic.  

You feel an irrepressible need to be distracted, to change the stillness

 and its overwhelming of you. 

You walk home thinking about plans for tomorrow.

But in the quiet of your room you realize what happened: you got scared. 

 You got scared of opening into the stillness, of allowing it to be.

  It was a close call.  You see how throughout your life you have invited 

one distraction after another to prevent just this from happening.  

Now you feel disappointed in yourself. So instead of turning on your computer

 or reading a book or getting something to eat, 

you sit down and invite the stillness back.

A phrase you once heard comes to you, 

from Psalm 46: "Be still, and know." Be still. Be still.

You arrange your body as you have learned to do.  You sit in a comfortable, 

alert position, with your back vertical so you don't slump or drift off. 

 You let your body be motionless, quiet.  The motionlessness of your body

 is a helpful friend; you know it is temporary, and in fact it is

 not really motionless - little shifts and sensations keep happening - 

but the relative stillness of your body reduces your identification with it,

 with the sense you are your body's ambitions and memories and likes and dislikes.

Learning to sit still, to settle like this, is called by Tibetan lamas "the first motionlessness."

 A quiet body at ease relaxes the persistence of thoughts.  Once the first motionlessness

 has been learned, they say, then it doesn't matter if the body is motionless or moving,

 for the the ground of stillness is always available.  But for now you need this helpful friend, 

and you sit still.

Now you invite what the lamas call "the second motionlessness."

 This is the still, empty openness "behind" each of your senses, 

the openness in which your senses arise.  You relax into that openness.

 To say it is not moving points to its nature, but that's not entirely accurate. 

 It is not the opposite of motion, or of the visible, or of sound. 

 This motionlessness is not definable - it is not a sensation.

 Nevertheless it has an almost kinesthetic effect on you, 

as if it is vanishing you, as if the existing one you thought you were, 

the receiver, the photographic plate that records your experience, this"one,"

 becomes transparent. You begin to feel the same threat of vanishing 

you felt on the road, but now you relax and let it be.

  "The third motionlessness" comes now, unbidden. 

 It is the stillness of presence itself - the stillness of a clearness that is always here,

 behind and within everything. It is what allows everything to show up.

  It is empty too not made out of anything, yet it is awesome and radiant in its presence.

  It is without being an it.

You remember now how the phrase from Psalm 46 continues:

 "Be still, and know I am God."

"God"  - this old, strange word that sounds like a judge and yet still resonates beyond that -

 could it mean - could it have first meant - this empty Presence without form,

 appearing as all form?  You realize you are trying to figure it out and you stop.

 Be still, and know I am God.  The knowing is not thinking.

 It is presence being present to presence.

You find yourself wavering here - one moment at ease in the clarity, 

and in the next thinking about it.  You hear the words again:

 Be still. Do nothing. Let be. Don't fill anything in. 

 No need to figure anything out. Relax.

A sense of peacefulness opens in you, vast and without dimension.  

This what Sufis call sakina - vast, peaceful tranquility without dimension -

 and suddenly you are smiling, your eyes are filling with tears - a joy -

 could it be called that? - a joyousness like praise and thankfulness together,

 love pouring forth from nowhere, the whole show showing up - 

mountain, sky, stars, bodies - from nothing, from stillness.

In remembering the Real, all hearts find joyous peace.

- Qur'an 13:28

~ Pir Elias Amidon

from Free Medicine

 

 

 

the struggle is over

.

.

.

VI.                    Riding the Bull

Mounting the bull, slowly I return homeward.

The voice of my flute intones through the evening.

Measuring with hand-beats the pulsation harmony, I direct the endless rhythm.

Whoever hears this melody will join me.

.

 

Comment: 

 

 This struggle is over; gain and loss are assimilated. 

 I sing the song of the village woodsman, and play the tunes of the children. 

 Astride the bull, I observe the clouds above.  

Onward I go, no matter who may wish to call me back.

.

 

 

 

 

 ~ Kakuan

from 10 BULLS

Transcribed by. Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps 

 Illustrated by Tomikichiro Tokuriki

 

 

 

clear of the sticky web of the personal

.

May morning be astir with the harvest of night;

Your mind quickening to the eros of a new question,

Your eyes seduced by some unintended glimpse

That cut right through the surface to a source.

May this be a morning of innocent beginning,

When the gift within you slips clear

Of the sticky web of the personal

With its hurt and its hauntings,

And fixed fortress corners,

A morning when you become a pure vessel

For what wants to ascend from silence,

May your imagination know

The grace of perfect danger,

To reach beyond imitation,

And the wheel of repetition,

Deep into the call of all

The unfinished and unsolved

Until the veil of the unknown yields

And something original begins

To stir toward your senses

And grow stronger in your heart

In order to come to birth

In a clean line of form,

That claims from time

A rhythm not yet heard,

That calls space to

A different shape.

May it be its own force field

And dwell uniquely

Between the heart and the light

To surprise the hungry eye

By how deftly it fits

About its secret loss.

~ John O'Donohue

from To Bless the Space Between Us

better thoughts?

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life --

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

~ William Stafford
from The Way It Is: New & Selected Poems

fantasies fade only in stillness

.

25

.

I chose high cliffs far from town

the sound of tall grass a half-open gate

where's an old pauper who isn't deferential

or a rich man who isn't vain

emergency loans don't come without strings

fantasies fade only in stillness

clouds too say mountains are better

returning at night they ease the solitude

.

27

.

Who enters this gate and studies this teaching

has to be thorough and push to the end

empty the body and reason remains

forget the mind and the world disappears

cloud-covered trees form a landscape of white

swallowing the sun the mountain turns red

the flag moves or is it the wind

it isn't the wind or the flag

.

28

.

A friend of seclusion arrives at my gate 

we greet and pardon our lack of decorum

a white mane gathered in back

a monk's robe worn untied

embers of leaves at the end of the night

howl of a gibbon announcing the dawn

sitting on cushion wrapped in quilts

words forgotten finally we meet

.

 

 

 .

~ Stonehouse

from The Zen Works of Stonehouse

Poems and Talks of a 14th Century Chinese Hermit

translated by Red Pine

.

while the music lasts

Men's curiosity searches past and future 

And clings to that dimension. 

But to apprehend 

The point of intersection of the timeless 

With time, is an occupation for the saint - No occupation either, 

but something given And taken,

 in a lifetime's death in love, 

Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender. 

For most of us, there is only the unattended

 Moment, the moment in and out of time, 

The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight, 

The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning 

 Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply 

That it is not heard at all, but you are the music 

While the music lasts.

~ T.S. Eliot

excerpt from The Dry Salvages

 

the secret signature

 

 

 

 

 

All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it -

 tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away 

just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest -

 if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself -

 you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say

 'Here at last is the thing I was made for.'

We cannot tell each other about it.

 It is the secret signature of each soul,

 the incommunicable and unappeasable want,

 the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work,

 and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds,

 when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. 

While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.

 

~ C. S. Lewis
from The Problem of Pain

 

 

 

we must be still and still moving into another intensity

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older

The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated

Of dead and living. Not the intense moment

Isolated, with no before and after,

But a lifetime burning in every moment

And not the lifetime of one man only

But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.

There is a time for the evening under starlight,

A time for the evening under lamplight

(The evening with the photograph album).

Love is most nearly itself

When here and now cease to matter.

Old men ought to be explorers

Here or there does not matter

We must be still and still moving

Into another intensity

For a further union, a deeper communion

Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,

The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters

Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

~ T. S. Eliot

excerpt from East Coker

Eliot regarded Four Quartets as his masterpiece, and it is the work that led to his being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. It consists of four long poems, each first published separately: Burnt Norton , East Coker , The Dry Salvages and Little Gidding . Each has five sections.