Sunday, December 4, 2022
how rarely I have stopped to thank the steady effort
pure attention
Bless the spirit that makes connections,
for truly we live in what we imagine.
Clocks move along side our real life
with steps that are ever the same.
Though we do not know our exact location,
we are held in place by what links us.
Across trackless distances
antennas sense each other.
Pure attention, the essence of the powers!
Distracted by each day's doing,
how can we hear the signals?
Even as the farmer labors
there where the seed turns into summer,
it is not his work. It is Earth who gives.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
from Sonnets to Orpheus, Part One, XII
Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy version
Wednesday, November 23, 2022
a deeper generosity
The logic of receiving hurt seems to run in the direction of never forgetting
either the hurt or the hurter. When you forgive, some deeper,
divine generosity takes you over. When you can forgive, then you are free.
When you cannot forgive, you are a prisoner of the hurt done to you.
If you are really disappointed in someone and you become embittered,
you become incarcerated inside that feeling. Only the the grace of forgiveness
can break the straight logic of hurt and embitterment. It gives you a way out,
because it places the conflict on a completely different level. In a strange way,
it keeps the whole conflict human. You begin to see and understand the conditions,
circumstances, or weakness that made the other person act as she did.
There is the security of the confinement and limitation that we know.
We are often willing to endure the searing sense of forsakenness and distance
which limitation brings rather than risking the
step out into the field of the unknown.
of generosity
the happiness of every living thing
We want everyone to be happy, never unhappy even for a moment.
We want the animals to be happy. The happiness of every living thing is what we want.
We want it very much but we cannot bring it about.
We cannot make even one individual happy.
It seems that this thing that we want most of all is out of our reach.
But we were born to serve happiness and we do serve it.
The confusion is due to our lack of awareness of real happiness.
Happiness is pervasive.
It is everywhere. And everywhere the same.
And it is forever.
When people are really happy they say:
When we are unhappy it is because something is covering our minds
It is not that happiness is all around us. That is not it at all.
It is not this or that or in this or that.
It is an abstract thing.
Happiness is unattached. Always the same.
Happiness is our real condition.
It is reality.
It is life.
…
When we see life we call it beauty. It is magnificent - wonderful.
We may be looking at the ocean when we are aware of beauty
Life is ever present in the desert and everywhere, forever.
By awareness of life we are inspired to live.
Life is consciousness of life itself.
~ Agnes Martin
from Agnes Martin, Paintings, Writings, Remembrances
with thanks to being silently drawn
Tuesday, November 22, 2022
on loving-kindness
He who is skilled in good, and wishes to
attain that state of Peace, should act thus:
he should be able, upright, perfectly upright,
amenable to corrections, gentle and humble.
He should be contented, easy to support,
unbusy, simple in livelihood,
with senses controlled, discreet,
not impudent, and not greedily attached to families.
He would not commit any slight misdeeds
that other wise men might find fault in him.
May all beings be well and safe,
may their hearts rejoice.
Whatever beings there are —
weak or strong, long or short,
big, medium-sized or small, subtle or gross,
Those visible or invisible,
residing near or far, those that have come to be
or have yet to come, (without exceptions)
may all beings be joyful.
Let one not deceive nor despise
another person, anywhere at all.
In anger and ill-will,
let him not wish any harm to another.
Just as a mother would protect her
only child with her own life,
even so, let him cultivate boundless thoughts
of loving kindness towards all beings.
Let him cultivate boundless thoughts
of loving kindness towards the whole world —
above, below and all around,
unobstructed, free from hatred and enmity.
Whether standing, walking, seated
or lying down, as long as he is awake,
he should develop this mindfulness.
This they say, is the divine abiding here.
Not erroneous with views,
endowed with virtues and insight,
with sensual desires abandoned,
he would come no more to be conceived in a womb.
Sunday, November 20, 2022
milkweed
.
While I stood here, in the open, lost in myself,
I must have looked a long time
Down the corn rows, beyond grass,
The small house.
White walls, animals lumbering toward the barn.
I look down now. It is all changed.
Whatever it was I lost, whatever I wept for
Was a wild, gentle thing, the small dark eyes
Loving me in secret.
It is here. At the touch of my hand,
The air fills with delicate creatures
From the other world.
~ James Wright
a blessing
Friday, November 11, 2022
today's stupidity
Wednesday, November 9, 2022
the iron grinder
Who sees, who is seen?
Seeing each other like this,
they experienced the recognition everyone craves -
to be seen exactly as we are,
nothing more,
and nothing less.
Seen like this,
all the many forms in the world
are the same
as one's own hand,
one's own face.
~ Liu Tiemo
from Women of the Way
by Sallie Tisdale
Tuesday, November 8, 2022
what is brought into being?
We exchange a few words and a presence is born.
We pass in the street for a fleeting instant,
and something new comes into being.
Sitting across the table together, a guest arrives.
What guest has been invited to join us?
What is brought into being?
– Shanti Natania Grace
judge like a king, and choose the purest
drinking it, we leave the two worlds.
God has put into the form of hashish a power
to deliver the taster from self-consciousness.
God has made sleep so
that it erases every thought.
God made Majnun love Layla so much that
just her dog would cause confusion in him.
There are thousands of wines
that can take over our minds.
Don’t think all ecstasies
are the same!
Jesus was lost in his love for God.
His donkey was drunk with barley.
Drink from the presence of saints,
not from those other jars.
Every object, every being,
is a jar full of delight.
Be a connoisseur,
and taste with caution.
Any wine will get you high.
Judge like a king, and choose the purest,
the ones unadulterated with fear,
or some urgency about “what’s needed.”
Drink the wine that moves you
as a camel moves when it’s been untied,
and is just ambling about.
~ Rumi
Translated by Coleman Barks
from The Essential Rumi
Wednesday, October 5, 2022
transitions and letting go
Different transitions challenge our attachments in different ways.
Because bigger transitions are more difficult, we must focus on our ability to let go now.
Letting go is like cleaning your garage or your closet.
Often, at times of transition, we behave without awareness.
We have so many opportunities to be aware. Think about approaching it this way:
~ Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
Sunday, October 2, 2022
the true love
There is a faith in loving fiercely
the one who is rightfully yours,
especially if you have
waited years and especially
if part of you never believed
you could deserve this
loved and beckoning hand
held out to you this way.
I am thinking of faith now
and the testaments of loneliness
and what we feel we are
worthy of in this world.
Years ago in the Hebrides,
I remember an old man
who walked every morning
on the grey stones
to the shore of baying seals,
who would press his hat
to his chest in the blustering
salt wind and say his prayer
to the turbulent Jesus
hidden in the water,
and I think of the story
of the storm and everyone
waking and seeing
the distant
yet familiar figure
far across the water
calling to them
and how we are all
preparing for that
abrupt waking,
and that calling,
and that moment
we have to say yes,
except it will
not come so grandly
so Biblically
but more subtly
and intimately in the face
of the one you know
you have to love
so that when
we finally step out of the boat
toward them, we find
everything holds
us, and everything confirms
our courage, and if you wanted
to drown you could,
but you don’t
because finally
after all this struggle
and all these years
you simply don’t want to
any more
you’ve simply had enough
of drowning
and you want to live and you
want to love and you will
walk across any territory
and any darkness
however fluid and however
dangerous to take the
one hand you know
belongs in yours.