merrily, merrily

.

considering ...

.

What is called the world is only thought.

–Ramana Maharshi

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last night, as I was sleeping

.

Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt — marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk? 

Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt — marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt — marvelous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night, as I slept,
I dreamt — marvelous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart


—Antonio Machado
Robert Bly version
read here by Robert Bly

.

Hoedad (reforestation)

.

I will walk to a place with a high cliff, and camp by the lake there at evening, and study the grand firs and the nobles reflected in the water made still by the evening.

I will sit by the fire and consider, and lie down to count stars, and sleep, and in sleep dream dreams of green bones.

When the morning arrives, grey and cold, I will rise and walk to the high place, bringing with me a drum I have made, and a song for my scattered people.

There, on the rock, where no one will hear, I will sing the sun up, and name names, and the names will be holy to me.


–Richard Bear

.
the rest of this lovely thing is
here
.

the dream is a dream

.

See the dream as dream.

There is no need of a way out of the dream!
Can you see that a way out is also a part of the dream?

All you have to do is see the dream as dream.
The very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory.

Why go anywhere? Just realize that you are dreaming a dream you call the world, and stop looking for ways out.

The problem is not the dream.
Your problem is that you like one part of your dream and not another.

Love all, or none of it, and stop complaining.

When you have seen the dream as a dream,
you have done all that needs be done.


–Nisargadatta Maharaj

.

exercise

.

Close both eyes.

Look from the other eye.


–Rumi

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not to worry

.

Awaken; return to yourself.

Now no longer asleep,
knowing they were only dreams,
clear-headed again,
treat everything around you as a dream.

—Marcus Aurelius

.

you know ...

.

Your effort is the bondage.

—Sri Ramana Maharshi



.

what price

.

If you seek reality you must set yourself free of all backgrounds, of all cultures, of all patterns of thinking and feeling.

Even the idea of being a man or woman, or even human, should be discarded. The ocean of life contains all, not only humans.

So, first abandon all self-identification, stop thinking of yourself as such-and-such, so-and-so, this or that.

Abandon all self-concern, worry not about your welfare, material or spiritual, abandon every desire, gross or subtle, stop thinking of achievement of any kind.

You are complete here and now, you need absolutely nothing.


–Nisargadatta Maharaj

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the river

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The river is of the earth
And it is free. It is rigorously
Embanked and bound,
And yet is free. “To hell
With restraint,” it says.
“I have got to be going.”

It will grind out its dams.
It will go over or around them.
They will become pieces.


–Wendell Berry

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what the things can teach us

 .

How surely gravity's law, strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the strongest thing and pulls it toward
the heart of the world.

Each thing - each stone, blossom, child - is held in place.

Only we, in our arrogance, push out beyond what we belong to

for some empty freedom.

If we surrendered to earth's intelligence

we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves in knots of our own making

and struggle, lonely and confused.

So, like children, we begin again to learn from the things,

because they are in God's heart; they have never left him.

This is what the things can teach us:

to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness.

Even a bird has to do that before he can fly.


–Rainer Maria Rilke

Anita Barrows/Joanna Macy translation

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human freedom

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Further conceive, I beg, that a stone, while continuing in motion, should be capable of thinking and knowing that it is endeavoring, as far as it can, to continue to move. 

Such a stone, being conscious merely of its own endeavor and not at all indifferent, would believe itself to be completely free, and would think that it continued in motion solely because of its own wish. 

This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined.

–Baruch Spinoza

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relax

.

The things we really need come to us only as gifts, and in order to receive them as gifts, we have to be open.

In order to be open we have to renounce ourselves, in a sense we have to die to our image of ourselves, our autonomy, our fixation upon our self-willed destiny. 

We have to be able to relax the psychic and spiritual cramp which knots us in the painful, vulnerable, helpless “I” that is all we know of ourselves.


―Thomas Merton
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

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not to worry

.

Don’t rely on your mind for liberation. 

It is the mind that brought you into bondage.

Go beyond it altogether.


–Nisargadatta Maharaj

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two orders of reality & the light of consciousness

.

[Physicist David] Bohm suggested that the explicate order is extracted from the implicate order in a similar way in which a holographic image is extracted from a series of swirls and shadings into a three-dimensional image when illuminated by laser light.

The illumination that extracts the physical universe from the implicate order is the light of consciousness.

In this model the act of observation draws ‘in-formation’ out of the implicate order and manifests it in the explicate order. Bohm was keen to use the term in-formation rather than information. By this he meant a process that actually ‘forms’ the recipient.

–Anthony Peake 
Infinite Mindfield

.

A thought without a body is not a star. –Aaron Shurin

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a thing is a think

.

A separate self is merely conventional reality, in the same sense as lines of latitude and longitude and the measurements of the clock; which is why one of the means of maya, illusion, is measurement. 

Things are measurements; they are units of thought, like inches are measurements. There are no things in physical nature.

How many things is a thing? However many you want. A “thing” is a “think”, a unit of thought; it is as much reality as you can catch hold of in one idea.


—Alan Watts

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thingsthatsing
.

the brain is wider than the sky

.

The Brain—is wider than the Sky—

For—put them side by side—

The one the other will contain

With ease—and You—beside—

The Brain is deeper than the sea—

For—hold them—Blue to Blue—

The one the other will absorb—

As Sponges—Buckets—do—

The Brain is just the weight of God—

For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—

And they will differ—if they do—

As Syllable from Sound—


–Emily Dickinson

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accidents

.

Accidents happen. That’s what everyone says. 

But in a quantum universe there are no such things as accidents, only possibilities and probabilities folded into existence by perception.


—Dr. Manhattan
from The Watchmen

.
thingsthatsing
.

not to worry

 

 .

No experience has been too unimportant,
and the smallest event unfolds like a fate, 

and fate itself is like a wonderful, wide fabric in which
every thread is guided by an infinitely tender hand 

and is laid alongside another thread
and is held and supported by a hundred others.


–Rainer Maria Rilke

.

the nature of the mind

.

What is called ‘mind’ is a wondrous power residing in the Self.
It causes all thoughts to arise.
Apart from thoughts, there is no such thing as mind.
Therefore, thought is the nature of mind. 

Apart from thoughts, there is no independent entity called the world.
In deep sleep there are no thoughts, and there is no world.
In the states of waking and dream, there are thoughts,
and there is a world also. 

Just as the spider emits the thread (of the web) out of itself and again withdraws it into itself, likewise the mind projects the world out of itself and again resolves it into itself.

When the mind comes out of the Self, the world appears.
Therefore, when the world appears (to be real), the Self does not appear; and when the Self appears (shines) the world does not appear. 

When one persistently inquires into the nature of the mind, the mind will end, leaving the Self (as the residue).
What is referred to as the Self is the Atman. 

The mind always exists only in dependence on something gross;
it cannot stay alone.

It is the mind that is called the subtle body or the soul (jiva).


–Ramana Maharshi

.

beauty

.

And a poet said, Speak to us of Beauty.
And he answered:

Where shall you seek beauty, and how 

shall you find her unless she herself be your

way and your guide?

And how shall you speak of her except 

she be the weaver of your speech?

The aggrieved and injured say, 

"Beauty is kind and gentle."

The tired and weary say,

"Beauty is of soft whisperings

She speaks in our spirit."

In winter say the snow-bound,

"She shall come with the spring leaping upon the hills."

All these things have you said of beauty,

Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,

And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy. 

It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,

But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.

It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,

But rather an image you see, though you

close your eyes and a song you hear, though

you shut your ears.

People of Orphalese, 

beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.

But you are life and you are the veil.

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.

But you are eternity and you are the mirror.

–Kahlil Gibran

from The Prophet

.
largerloves
.

perfect goodness

.

Withdraw into yourself and look.

And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smooths there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown from his work. 

So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labor to make all one glow or beauty and never cease chiseling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendor of virtue, until you see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine.

–Plotinus

.

on a day

.

On a day when the wind is perfect, the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty ...

Today is such a day.


–Rumi

.

on a lonely spray

.

Under a lonely sky a lonely tree

Is beautiful. All that is loneliness

Is beautiful. A feather lost at sea;

A staring owl; a moth; a yellow tress

Of seaweed on a rock, is beautiful.

The night-lit moon, wide-wandering in sky;

A blue-bright spark, where ne'er a cloud is up;

A wing, where no wing is, it is so high;

A bee in winter, or a buttercup,

Late-blown, are lonely, and are beautiful.

She, whom you saw but once, and saw no more;

That he, who startled you, and went away;

The eye that watched you from a cottage door;

The first leaf, and the last; the break of day;

The mouse, the cuckoo, and the cloud, are beautiful.

For all that is, is lonely; all that may

Will be as lonely as is that you see;

The lonely heart sings on a lonely spray,

The lonely soul swings lonely in the sea,

And all that loneliness is beautiful.

All, all alone, and all without a part

Is beautiful, for beauty is all where;

Where is an eye is beauty, where an heart

Is beauty, brooding out, on empty air,

All that is lonely and is beautiful.


–James Stephens

.

beautiful

.

You are flawed,
you are stuck in old patterns,
you become carried away with yourself.

Indeed you are quite impossible in many ways.

And still, you are beautiful beyond measure.

–John Welwood

.

arrivals

.
 

The great corn arrives.

The child-rain arrives.

In a way of beauty arrives.

Grasshopper arrives.

From the west arrives.

Vegetation arrives.

Pollen arrives.

In a way of beauty arrives.


–Diné

.

let your beauty manifest

 

.

Let your beauty manifest itself without talking and calculation.​

You are silent. It says for you: I am. 

And in comes meaning thousandfold​, comes at long last over everyone.


–Rainer Maria Rilke

.

beloved

 

 .

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

Daniel Ladinsky translation

.
becausebirds
.

theory

.

I am what is around me.

Women understand this.

One is not duchess

A hundred yards from a carriage.

These, then are portraits:

A black vestibule;

A high bed sheltered by curtains.

These are merely instances.


–Wallace Stevens

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