the many wines

God has given us a dark wine so potent that,

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 on 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,

and 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

from The Book of Love

translation by Coleman Barks

our inner worlds

We assume too readily that we share the one world with other people... 

It is true at the objective level that we inhabit the same physical space as other humans; 

the sky is, after all, the one visual constant that unites everyone's perception of being in the world... 

At a deeper level, each person is the custodian of a completely private, individual world...

when people come to visit you, they bring all of their inner worlds,...

their lives are not elsewhere; they are totally there with you, before you, reaching out toward you. 

 When the visit is over, their bodies stand up, walk out, and carry this hidden world away. 

 This recognition also illuminates the mystery of making love. 

It is not just two bodies that are close, but rather two worlds: 

they circle each other and flow into each other. 

We are capable of such beauty, delight, and terror 

because of this infinite and unknown world within us.

~ John O'Donohue

art by Norval Morrisseau

in the beginning was the dream

In the beginning was the dream.
  In the eternal night where no dawn broke, the dream deepened.
  Before anything ever was, it had to be dreamed.  
Everything had its beginning in possibility.  
Every single thing is somehow the expression and incarnation 
of a thought.  If a thing had never been thought, 
it could never be.  If we take Nature as the great artist of longing
 then all presences in the world have emerged from her mind 
and imagination.  We are children of the earth's dreaming. 
  When you compare the silent, under-night of Nature
 with the detached and intimate intensity of the person, 
it is almost as if Nature is in dream and we are her children 
who have broken through the dawn into time and place. 

  Fashioned in the dreaming of the clay,
 we are always somehow haunted by that;
 we are unable ever finally to decide what is dream
 and what is reality.  Each day we live in what we call reality. 
 Yet the more we think about it, the more life seems to resemble a dream.

  We rush through our days in such stress and intensity,
 as if we were here to stay,  and the serious project of the world 
depended on us.  We worry and grow anxious; 
 we magnify trivia until they have become important enough
 to control our lives.  Yet all the time, we have forgotten
 that we are but temporary sojourners on the surface of a strange planet
 spinning slowly in the infinite night of the cosmos. 

 There is no protective zone around any of us. 
 Anything can happen to anyone at any time.  
There is no definitive dividing line between reality and dream.  
What we consider real is often precariously dreamlike.
  One of the linguistic philosophers said that there is no evidence
 that could be employed to disprove this claim:  
The world only came into existence ten minutes ago
 complete with all our memories.  Any evidence you could proffer
 could still be accounted for by the claim.  Because our grip
 on reality is tenuous, every heart is infused
 with the dream of belonging.

~ John O' Donohue
 from 'Eternal Echoes'
 art by Erté.

from anxiety to happiness

 

 

 

 

A documentary about how to let go of fear, anxiety and the illusion of control


Alejandro is an ordinary man, in the year 2018 he has a unique opportunity:

 to travel in a very close way along a Buddhist monk who lived 50 years in the Himalayas

 and accompanied the most recognized masters of Tibetan Buddhism 

With his genuine humor, daring and vulnerability, in 'From Stress to Happiness' 

we are guided by Alejandro De Grazia, who makes us reflect on issues of our mind.

 All accompanied by breathtaking landscapes that remind us of the essence of the transcendental

 and the simple, already making us look for answers to the questions of the documentary.

 De Grazia invites us to an incredible journey that will undoubtedly transform those 

who have seen this movie. 

 

 

 ~ Alejandro De Grazia

Matthieu Ricard 

found on Netflix

tracks

Night, two o'clock: moonlight.  The train has stopped

in the middle of the plain.  Distant bright points of a town

twinkle cold on the horizon.

As when someone has gone into a dream so far

that he'll never remember he was there

when he comes back to his room.

And as when someone goes into a sickness so deep

that all his former days become twinkling points, a swarm,

cold and feeble on the horizon.

The train stands perfectly still,

Two o'clock: full moonlight, few stars.

~ Tomas Transtromer

translated by Robert Bly

the name

I got sleepy while driving and pulled in under a tree at the 

side of the road.  Rolled up in the back seat and went to sleep.

How long? Hours. Darkness had come.

All of a sudden I was awake, and didn't know who I was?

I'm fully conscious, but that doesn't help.  Where am I?

WHO am I? I am something that has just woken up in a back

 seat, throwing itself around in panic like a cat in a gunnysack. 

Who am I?

After a long while my life comes back to me.  My name

comes to me like an angel.  Outside the castle walls there is a

 trumpet blast (as in the Leonora Overture)  and the footsteps

that will save me come quickly quickly down the long staircase.

It's me coming! It's me!

But it is impossible to forget the fifteen-second battle in the 

hell of nothingness, a few feet from a major highway where

the cars slip past with their lights dimmed.

~ Tomas Tranströmer

 

splendor

.

 

 

 

 

One day it's the clouds,

one day the mountains.

One day the latest bloom

of roses - the pure monochromes,

the dazzling hybrids - inspiration

for the cathedral's round windows.

 

Every now and then

there's the splendor

of thought: the singular

idea and its brilliant retinue -

words, cadence, point of view,

little gold arrows flitting

between the lines.

And too the splendor

of no thought at all:

hands lying calmly

in the lap, or swinging

a six iron with effortless

tempo. More often than not

splendor is the star we orbit

without a second thought,

especially as it arrives

and departs. One day

it's the blue glassy bay,

one day the night

and its array of jewels,

visible and invisible.

 

Sometimes it's the warm clarity

of a face that finds your face

and doesn't turn away.

 

Sometimes a kindness, unexpected,

that will radiate farther

than you might imagine.

 

One day it's the entire day

itself, each hour foregoing

its number and name,

its cumbersome clothes, a day

that says come as you are,

large enough for fear and doubt,

with room to spare: the most secret

wish, the deepest, the darkest,

turned inside out.

 

 

 

 

~ Thomas Centolella

(Views from along the Middle Way)

.

always new

The soul, like the moon,

is new, and always new again.

And I have seen the ocean

continuously creating.

Since I scoured my mind

and my body, I too, Lalla,

am new, each moment new.

My teacher told me one thing.

Live in the soul.

When that was so,

I began to go naked,

and dance.

~ Lalla

from Naked Song

translation by Coleman Barks

awareness is

Don't talk of different religions.

The one reality is everywhere,

not just in a Hindu, or a Muslim,

or anywhere else! Realize:

your awareness is

the truth about God.

~ Lalla

simply joy

There are seconds, they only come five or six at a time, 

and you suddenly feel the presence of eternal harmony, 

fully achieved. It is nothing earthly; not that it's heavenly,

 but man cannot endure it in his earthly state. 

One must change physically or die. 

The feeling is clear and indisputable. 

As if you suddenly sense the whole of nature and

 suddenly say: yes, this is true. 

This is not tenderheartedness, but simply joy.

~ Fyodor Dostoevsky

from The Devils found in 

Collection of the best works of Fyodor Dostoevsky

.

remembering now

.

 

 

You think you will never forget any of this, you will remember

 it always just the way it was. But you can't remember it the way it was. 

To know it, you have to be living in the presence of it right as it is happening.

 It can return only by surprise.

 

 Speaking of these things tells you that there are no words for them

 that are equal to them or that can restore them to your mind.

 And so you have a life that you are living only now,

now and now and now, gone before you can speak of it, 

and you must be thankful for living day by day,

 moment by moment, in this presence.

.

But you have a life too that you remember. It stays with you. 

You have lived a life in the breath and pulse and living light of the present,

 and your memories of it, remember now, are of a different life in a different world and time.

 When you remember the past, you are not remembering it as it was. 

You are remembering it as it is.

 It is a vision or a dream, present with you in the present,

 alive with you in the only time you are alive.

.

~ Wendell Berry

it is enough

.

.

It is enough that one surrenders oneself. 

Surrender is to give oneself up to the original cause of one's being. 

Do not delude yourself by imagining such a source to be some God outside you. 

One's source is within oneself. 

Give yourself up to it. 

.

...

~ Ramana Maharshi


.

.

water, forms and forces

 

 

 

 

 
Christopher Tin: Live at Cadogan Hall - Waloyo Yamon

 

 

Water is one of the most powerful forces in the world. It creates life and brings about death, and it has the power to shape the face of the earth. Water means different things to different cultures, and I wanted to explore this in The Drop That Contained the Sea. Each piece is inspired by water in a different form, arranged in the order that water flows through the world: melting snow, mountain streams, rivers, the ocean, and so forth. And like Calling All Dawns, the end of the album flows back into the beginning, reflecting the endless nature of the water cycle. Each of the 10 pieces is also sung in a different language, exploring a different vocal tradition: Bulgarian women's choirs, Mongolian throat singing, and Portuguese fado, to name just a few.

 

 

 

The album features an all-star collection of international classical and world music artists, including Soweto Gospel Choir, Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares, Dulce Pontes, Anonymous 4, Schola Cantorum, Kardes Türküler, Nominjin, Roopa Mahadevan, Angel City Chorale, and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (conducted by Christopher Tin).

 

 with thanks to love is a place

 

 

 

 

 

antidote

You and I are not only here in terms of the work we’re doing on ourselves.

 We are here in terms of the role we’re playing within the systems of which we are a part,

 if you look at the way change affects people that are unconscious.

Change generates fear, fear generates contractions,

 contraction generates prejudice, bigotry, and ultimately violence.

 You can watch the whole thing happen, and you can see it happen

 in society after society after society.

The antidote for that is a consciousness that does not respond to change with fear.

 

~ Ram Dass

standing up

In a split second of hard thought, I managed to catch her. 

 I stopped, holding the hen in my hands.  Strange,

 she didn't really feel living: rigid, dry, 

and old white plume-ridden lady's hat that shrieked out the truths of 1912.  

Thunder in the air.  An odor rose from the fence-boards,

 as when you open a photo album that has got so old

 that no one can identify the people any longer.

I carried her back inside the chicken netting and let her go. 

 All of a sudden she came back to life, she knew who she was,

 and ran off according to the rules.  Hen-yards are thick with taboos. 

 But the earth all around is full of affection and tenacity.  

A low stone wall half-overgrown with leaves.  

When dusk begins to fall the stones are faintly luminous 

with the hundred-year-old warmth from the hands that built it.

It's been a hard winter, but summer is here and the fields want us to walk upright. 

 Every man unimpeded, but careful, as when you stand up in a small boat. 

 I remember a day in Africa: on the banks of the Chari, there were many boats, 

an atmosphere positively friendly, the men almost blue-black in color 

with three parallel scars on each cheek (meaning the Sara tribe). 

 I am welcomed on a boat - it's a canoe hollowed from a dark tree.  

The canoe is incredibly wobbly, even when you sit on your heels.  A balancing act.

  If you have the heart on the left side you have to lean a bit to the right, 

nothing in the pockets, no big arm movements, please, all rhetoric has to be left behind.  

Precisely: rhetoric is impossible here. 

 The canoe glides out over the water.

~ Tomas Transtromer

from The Half-Finished Heaven

translation by Robert Bly

Photo by Will Baxter/CRS